#MYLDN (473)

Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london

To see the full gallery “The Visibles” please click here. If you have the time or the inclination for an explanation, read on…

I see these luminous Orange men everywhere. I did a week on them before and since have found they keep catching my eye…yes, as I joked before, it was possibly to do with the fact they are wearing high visibility workwear but as I started to collect this pictures, it started to make me think…

In this day and age we are told we can be anything we want to be, that we should strive to be an almighty success and reach the top of the pile no matter what…unfortunately most of us won’t make it and will then be made to feel like failures…but do we all have to be leaders & high achievers? Does the focus of our lives have to relate exclusively to how well we are doing? Could it not be enough just to live a life and be happy? Does everything have to be performance related?

After the 2nd World War it was accepted that a successful society was a team effort and every single role, no matter what, was considered important. Every working position was valued as intergral and vital to the functioning of society regardless of the pay packet. As the decades have gone on, the focus has changed. It feels that what is important now is how well you are doing within society rather than how well that society is doing. We all want the country to run right but as all the emphasis is on your own position within it, so is it any wonder there are societal problems? Politicians, who are suppposed to be the ones actually working for a better society, are clearly self-serving so what chance do we have?

Primate society is dictated by social status which we have inherited that from our evolutionary ancestors and that will probably never leave us but there can still be respect for what are considered to be more menial positions. The modern generations seem fixated on rising to the top, mostly through the entertainment industry, as they seek to emulate their (pop) idols and the idea of working your life in a normal job with no prospects of fame or fortune appearts to be abhorent to them. Maybe this form of positive affirmation that your dreams can and will come true is ironically having a negative and detrimental effect as it burdens most with a massive and debilitating shortfall…

This week’s photographs focuses on workers in London who, although technically, extremely visible, are largely ignored, considered unimportant, as are so many who’s jobs are in what Americans describe as blue collar work. But without the builders, the cleaners, the road sweepers, the fast food workers, society would not function. This is not a cry to champion the little guy (or girl) but to state that there is no shame in being one. Living in London is like being in a giant ant colony and most of us are worker ants and there ain’t nothing wrong in that…

 Does it really matter that much what you do? A jobs a job, it doesn’t define who you are. Its just what you do. Its going to take up around 8 hours a day and eventually everything sucks a little bit. Even being an astronaut. (long hours, bad food, cramped conditions) If it was great it wouldn’t be called work, it would be called pleasure. Personally, I don’t believe there are such things as bad jobs, just bad people and bad attitudes. You could work for a c*** at the top, or a saint at the bottom…if you are with the former or the latter, who’s going home happier?

Highly-regarded jobs are often used by those who have them as a social tool to assert superiority but do not envy these people, if they need a constant boost to their ego, they are probably more in line for pity. The truth is if you exist you are a success, everything else is just details.

(yes, I got all that from blokes in brightly coloured outfits)