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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty One: The Marketplace -- crossroads of a community. > Family Housewares Stall, Ananda Festival, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005
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Family Housewares Stall, Ananda Festival, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005

Every January, a festival is held to raise money for the upkeep of Bagan’s thousand-year-old Ananda temple. A tent city of stalls and shops surrounds the temple. Among the participants is this family who sells housewares. In itself, a picture of a housewares stall is hardly a candidate to produce an expressive travel picture. But when I saw three heads incongruously sticking up amidst the mass of containers, I knew I had an incongruous image in terms of abstraction, scale, age, and appearance. The placement of the sales counter in the middle of the display virtually drowns the salespeople in a sea of silver. Only their heads are visible. And one of those heads is that of a very happy young child. Both the child and his mother cover their faces in Thanaka, the yellow skin paste that is unique to Burma – a final incongruity that relates this picture to its location.

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Phil Douglis27-Jun-2005 20:28
Thanks, Rod -- when I was making the image, I must have intuitively sensed the role of color and contrast here, but did not fully appreciate the value of these factors to the image until I read your comment. I was thinking more of the many incongruities here. Thanks for shifting my vision to the role that color and contrast plays in expression.
Guest 27-Jun-2005 19:07
Part of what makes this photo work for me is that their goods are in fact "silver" in color. Gold is warm, and would match their skin's color. Silver, on the other hand, is a good color contrast, but more importantly, produces so many incongruities because silver is cold, hard, and sterile.

Their faces stand out not just because they are differnt color, but their smiles and happiness contrasts the "cold" of the sliver. Their face powder (used for skin protection from sun, etc, if I remember that culture correctly) contrasts the "sterile" implication of the silver. And their physical proxmity to each other (not equally separated by distance or height or distance from the edges of the frame) contrasts the perfectly stacked, uniform placement of the silver goods. This photo shows contrast after contrast to me.
Phil Douglis18-Apr-2005 17:08
Frugality means making the best of what you have. And the Burmese, along with the rest of Southeast Asia, do it well. You interpret this market stall as a "lifeless" place, and the scene as "congested" but to these people, it is all they have, and as you point out, they seem to be enjoying it. Along with the little boy wearing makeup like his mother, it offers an incongruous relationship that is indeed reminiscent of your Moving Playground image. Thanks, Jen, for these observations.
Jennifer Zhou18-Apr-2005 09:07
Another picture about frugality, I guess it is a typical character of Burman.
You are right, if not for those happy faces, this could be a dead picture. They certainly warm up this lifeless place and made a wonderful statement for Burman people---how they are happy living a congested but simply life. Somewhat, this remind me of my "Moving Playground" picture I took on the street of Hefei China.http://www.pbase.com/angeleyes_zyl/image/38397007
Phil Douglis04-Mar-2005 20:37
You are right, Marek. There is a production line sense to all of those rows of shiny cans, with the little heads incongruously popping up among them.
Guest 04-Mar-2005 17:06
I like the production line connotation ;-)
Phil Douglis01-Mar-2005 02:25
I hope you would not categorize that wonderful family, so incongruously surrounded by all of those metal objects, as "things." This famiy is the key to the picture. The presentation of the products is the context that gives them purpose and meaning.
monique jansen28-Feb-2005 14:11
Another shot full of "things", very Asian atmosphere. Very typical of many markets in the non-western world, where presentation is totally different.
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