A close reading of all those images of brokers with their hands on their faces.

It’s difficult to illustrate many business stories, especially an economic collapse. All of the action takes place nonvisually—stock prices dribble downward, mortgages go unpaid, and jobs go missing. Newspapers, Web sites, and television news crews are left searching for a way to offer a tangible face to a nebulous crisis. Left with no choice, they’re forced to turn to the same worn animal over and over again:

The Broker With His Hands on His Face.

The BWHHOHF has become stock photography in all senses of the phrase. The image of a BWHHOHF is unavoidable—blue coat on, tie pulled off-center, sleeves rolled high—a model of mindless devotion to the immediate task. And almost without fail, he has his hands jammed against his forehead, smushed against his cheek, or running through his hair. He looks pained and stricken. He looks like we feel.

In reality, the BWHHOHF is a dying breed. After decades of closely monitored population control, brokers have been fleeing their natural habitat, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The number of stock specialists—the guys who find buyers and sellers for transactions—and traders—the guys barking out the orders—has been halved in recent years. (There is, however, some movement to coerce traders back onto the floor.) The New York Post writes that the trading floor is such a relic of a lost era that it’s turned into a tourist attraction—foreigners come to gawk as if they’re on a safari.

Nevertheless, BWHHOHFs drift through our zeitgeist. A cottage industry of BWHHOHF appreciation has emerged, dedicated to celebrating the beasts before possible extinction. As markets tumbled in September, two different Tumblr blogs were created to chronicle BWHHOHF photos. One is bluntly called “The Brokers With Hands on Their Faces Blog.” It’s a found-art project—commentary-free pictures of BWHHOHFs in the wild. The other is the more playful “Sad Guys on Trading Floors.” It’s a compendium of brokers—not all of whom have their hands planted on their heads—with snarky comments and dialogue written beneath the images.

The genre reached maturity when Stephen Colbert addressed the issue in the lead segment on The Colbert Report. After warning that the recession was forcing newspapers to burn through BWHHOHF photos at an alarming rate, Colbert posed for his own photos. His bemoaned forehead-clasp and raised fist draw from time-honored traditions of the BWHHOHF people.