Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Hard Hard Work in Bucharest at the Turn of the C20

Young Street Busker

With the social reform movements in Europe in the C19, photographers felt encouraged to record the plight of working men and women of the time - here in Bucharest round the turn of the twentieth century and up to the 1920s.

Though the names of some of these professions which have pretty mush disappeared may have a strange romantic resonance in popular culture today, everyone knows the reality would have been very different.

The obvious pathos in the image of the street musician encouraged me to place it first.

The second shows women gathering each day at some predetermined spot in the hope of being offered temporary work as maids.

Maids for Rent

Counter to expectation, the Library of Congress informs that chimney sweeping ...



... has been a steady profession right up to today.

A post on working class professions in the street in Romania would hardly be complete without an image of a fortune teller.

Fortune Teller

Physically demanding itinerant jobs included tinkering ...

Tinker

... wood cutting ...

Wood Cutters

... and iron working ...

Iron Worker

Though life would hardly have been much easier for organ grinders ...

Organ Grinders

An Organ Grinder

To finish, an image ...


... of 'the oldest profession in the world'.

A post dedicated to those who usually slip through the cracks in the system.