The title is really "Premium Vegetables" but I didn't really feel like titling the thread with that.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), August 10, 2000

Answers

Ugh! Powerful!

I don't know what to say -- reminds me of those war images of children running away from napalm though I'm not quite sure why.

The woman of the left is the picture of despair, the woman on the right of apprehension. It establishes a tension in the image that is almost unbearable on the (this) viewer.

It would have been nice to crop away the man on the left, and maybe put some structure in the background, but there you go...

-- (allane@cybaea.com), August 10, 2000.

Is that bizzare or what? For me also it has a slight resemblance to "Napalm Girl." Interestingly, the Digital Journalist site has a story about it put up just today: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0008/submenu_Ad.htm

-- Tony Rowlett (rowlett@alaska.net), August 10, 2000.

Funny, to me it looks like coffee at my green grocer -- though I imagine someone just got some bad news. Dean

-- Dean Lastoria (dvlastor@sfu.ca), August 10, 2000.

I don't get the impression of tragedy, just of discomfort. They're people sitting out in the intense heat. The older woman on the right is able to endure; the younger woman on the left really needs relief.

-- Mike Dixon (burmashave@compuserve.com), August 10, 2000.

It was definitely hot, but I think it was exhaustion. Most of the people working in this place get up at 3AM, load up their trucks, and head out. By 11AM, it's hot and they're exhausted. They sell a hundred dollars of vegetables and head home.

In a rural Mexican market, I saw an old (70?) woman, barefoot, sit down, and put out her bucket of limes. They were probably worth $2 for all of them, maybe less. I couldn't photograph her. She wouldn't have let me, but I thought it was the most depressing thing I had ever seen. The market is once a week, and she is making $2. How is it worth it to go from the hills (where most of the people in the market live) into town to make $2?

So these people are living the most marginal existence, they let me photograph them (well the woman looking at me did, she was the only one aware), and I walked on. They go back to their farm and their 3AM wakeups.

I think the man on the left is important, he adds some depth to the photo and his headless body yet more uncertainty about where it's all going...

Thanks for the comments.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), August 11, 2000.