MAN ASLEEP

The photograph is a street shot taken in Windsor, Ontario during a civil garbage strike, when the city was experiencing a spike in the unemployment rate that made it the highest in the country. The man is anonymous but, for me, is synonymous with the city. It is a city that was more exposed than most other cities at the time: its unemployment statistics became national fodder when the Detroit auto industry collapsed. The civil strike caused garbage to pile to head height. Everybody’s waste became public concern. Further, the hot summers meant that most people spent their days lounging in the shade on their verandas. Private moments become public: a series of invalids hooked up to oxygen tanks sharing cigarettes in the afternoon… a man taking a snooze on the sidewalk. While not necessarily unheard of in Vancouver, it is descriptive of a general publicity and malaise I noticed while visiting the city.

David Peters
2009

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at 5:17 pm. It is filed under features, photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.