Lo-Tech

I don’t know if I am naive, or suffer from a tendency to romanticize relative poverty, or simply prefer a world that reminds me more of the 1950s Hamilton, Ontario neighborhoods I grew up in, or maybe all three, but I am drawn to what look to me to be simple technologies that do the work that is often done by more complex, more expensive, more hi-tech machines.

A case in point is this welded together jerry-rigged device for transporting recyclables. It reminds me of the “sheeny man” who used to ride up and down the alleyways of Hamilton collecting scrap metal and other recyclables from his perch high on a horse-drawn cart.

I can’t claim to know whether these lo-tech necessities of life in middle income nations around the globe are better for the environment than all the shiny high-tech you see everywhere, including here, but I do know I’d rather take a photograph of this machine than a Ford F-450 pickup.

In terms of photographic aesthetics, this black-and-white photograph suffers from a lack of separation between “subject” and “background”. The textures and forms of the components of the wall and sidewalk and the various plants seem to absorb the machine. It is this blending that I like here.