No Logos

A Market street in Kashgar, the far west of the western region of Xinjiang, China, 1998. No chains or franchises here, with their ‘quiet conspiracy of sameness’. And yet, all the shops and restaurants look much the same. Every kitchenware shop sells pretty much the same inventory, arranged in much the same way.

But the shops and restaurants are, to the best of my knowledge, truly private enterprises here in the Chinese mixed economy. The choices made in marketing, sales, presentation, shop design are made here, within the shops themselves, not a corporate office, decisions made by people who quite possibly never managed a shop.

So the shops seem all the same, but not. Just as, at their core, all markets are the same, but not.

A note about the photo’s black frame.

My photography instructor at Rochester Institute of Technology, Gunther Cartwright, insisted we hand in our assignments printed full frame, no cropping. This was so we’d learn to carefully frame our photographs before clicking the shutter release. This was back in the 35mm film days, so we were required to include some of the unexposed film in our prints to show they were uncropped.

These photos from China were shot with my Olympus OM-2 on Fujichrome transparency film, X probably ProVia in this case. The device I used to transfer them to digital included some of the unexposed film around the image, so I’ve kept it here, just out of old habits. 😉