England - London - Street sweeper and sleeping office worker

As a young office worker sleeps incongruously on a marble pavement, a street sweeper nearby brushes away litter with a small dustpan. The manual labourer wears blue overalls, yellow gloves and keys in his back pocket while the man in a wastecoat and smart trousers and polished slip-on shoes appears to be fast asleep, his fingers across his chest. This scene suggests the social divisions of the working man: Of the young, educated post-war generation whose opportunities have afforded them a faster lifestyle, far removed from that of the physically-demanding job of a man whose life has been spent cleaning and sweeping. English social differences is clearly represented here as the harshness of the manual labourer versus a lazy youth of today, seen in the middle of the modern city.

Filename

city_resting03-16-1997.jpg

Copyright

© Richard Baker. No copying, screen grabbing, transmission or publication without permission.

Image Size

5364x3537 / 5.7MB

work lunchtime relaxation passer-by lower-body legs businessman urban bottom-half light-hearted funny humor humour witty joke leisure stress-free quiet moment privacy public summer perspective trick false reality deception deceive obscured resting relaxed fate poor society future prospects life earning money wealth gap disadvantaged pavement sidewalk street social status status class division suits parallel universe extremes age humanity respect dignity London City of London worker jobs career hope salary suit professional upturn business man male wage-earner bread-winner livelihood young workers blue-collar white-collar traditional era bygone times manual labour old experience office worker social social scale symbolic sweeper overalls differences janitor sleeping lazy exhaustion weary tired on duty stress crotch style Canary Wharf resentment working man divisions excess greed 1990s 90s money-making capitalism legacy nostalgia positive commodities exchange market brokers markets traders Canada Square Docklands prosperous wealth successful smug arrogant arrogance confident Thatcherite nineties working class demeanour hardship generations opposites generation gap divide demographics unaware selfish people

Contained in galleries

Grounded, Street Pictures (large edit), Urban