Over several years, I photographed my father’s work as an auto mechanic in Brooklyn, NY. the shop, currently in-progress, focuses on the labor and tools of his auto shop.

I don’t know anything about cars (I didn’t get a driver’s license until my late twenties). I often went to visit the shop while growing up, but it all seemed opaque until I ventured in with a camera during college. My father frequently moved locations around Brooklyn, the constants were his tools, gloves, and uniforms that traveled with him to each new space.

My father spends seven days a week in the shop, connecting with the intricacies of complex machinery to ensure his clients’ cars keep running. His work is often done alone, for hours, and without speaking, silent apart from mechanical noise. I was drawn to the tiny details of his work that exist below the surface, the ones that reveal an intimate exchange of the human hand. Drawers filled with screws and bolts. Piles of receipts. Replacement parts on scraps of wood. His hands in an engine. These small moments uncovered a core of his quiet nature. These tools, parts, and his hands lent themselves to understanding labor as a gesture of tenderness and care, in an otherwise noise-filled space filled with metal and machine.