Le travail à la chaîne en images. Les documents visuels face à l’histoire industrielle de Renault

Abstract

Images can significantly renew the history of labor and working practices. Still, it is necessary to make them speak. Based on the results of my 2001 thesis on the implementation of assembly lines in the Renault factories, my article proposes a historical method to analyze visual sources. It first establishes an inventory of way images were taken into account by historians in the early 2000s and later. It then presents a specific approach to three types of archive images (photographs, films and layouts). From its epistemological outcome, it draws up an analytic table applicable to any form of visual document. Finally its shows how 3D modeling can serve as an aid to interpretation of the epistemological questions that remain.

Keywords

• work
• labor
• method
• analytic table
• image
• analog