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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty One: The Marketplace -- crossroads of a community. > Finding the Vendor, Chinatown, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005
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Finding the Vendor, Chinatown, Yangon, Myanmar, 2005

This seller of packaged goods in Yangon's Chinatown has virtually vanished amidst his wares. Once again, it was color that drew me to the scene, and incongruity that sealed the deal. The man is small, the display of goods huge, and vivid in its colors. It seems to never end. The man seems to take it all in stride – his expression is quite ordinary and far different from the extraordinary nature of his display. The two customers, who I shot from behind, represent the viewer’s perspective. It is the viewer, after all, who is next in line.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20
1/100th sec. at f/2.8 full exif

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Tim May20-May-2005 18:31
So interesting that "frugality" is sensed here when I have almost the opposite response - for me this represents the human "value?" of waste and wantonness. There is not an essential item in this shop - almost everything there will be seen thrown along the edges of the road in a few weeks time. For me then the human lost in the middle represents how we are drowning is a sea of useless flotsam.
Phil Douglis15-Apr-2005 18:51
I like your "frugality" concept, Jen. I never thought of that before, but you are right -- this guy is indeed using minimum space to display maximum goods, providing not only a more effective use of space, but also a more incongruous image for me. I have indeed abstracted the scene by cutting off the entire top of his display, as well as much of the left side of it, and I show the customers from only the waist up. The incongruity comes from contrasting the scale of that little window to the big display of goods around it. I am always looking for ways to project the viewer into the image, and by including the backs of those two customers, the viewer must stand in line as well. We must wait our turn to buy, and patience is certainly a human value.
Jennifer Zhou15-Apr-2005 05:46
This picture express a human value of frugality to me, using minimum space to display maximum goods. Also well abstracted, it is rather busy picture but the pattern of the goods lead us to the men, and we don't feel the picture is disordered at all. And the men boxed up in the middle of colorful things is incongruous. Lastly, I guess not many photographers will include those two customers since without them this would be a clearer shot, but they would miss a very important point because by including them, you simply makes us, the viewers, to become paticipators not just only observers.
Phil Douglis01-Mar-2005 02:22
The key here is make order out of disorder. I try to do this by taking a vantage point behind those customers, in order to make the viewer "next in line." They lead us to that man sitting the black hole in the middle of all that color.
monique jansen28-Feb-2005 14:10
A very typical market scene in Asia I would say - the clutter, the colors, the apparent chaos.
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