In Rear-Side Economics the American photographer Jeff Luckey shows us a slice of Americana rarely granted any attention in glossy magazines – the ‘rear side’ of the flow of goods in the American supermarkets. In a series of precise segments Luckey shows parts of buildings empty of people and used for commercial activity. Back doors are surrounded by constructional mechanisms, containers and temporary furnishings. This is where the invisible part of daily trading takes place, with its monotonous deliveries of goods and recirculation of waste. Luckey goes into zones that are normally only seen by the employees who use them for lunch and smoking breaks. In that way the pictures can also be understood as a sociopolitical comment on the everyday surroundings of low-paid Americans, in the absence of visual status markers. All these non-places represent a basic capitalist infrastructure. The sense of isolation is underscored by the annexation of possible free spaces by the automobile culture.

Aesthetically, these pictures are typified by an interface between architectural planning and factual decay – they are both constructive and latently lamentable. Luckey’s pictures are ingenious in the sense that they cultivate the photographic surfaces with great stringency – in the sense that he uses devices that purge away the inessential. Luckey’s method emphasizes thoroughly elaborated expression. The pictures can be viewed as abstracted, modernism-inspired compositions with unspecified key players.