Capitalisms Street Entrepreneurs

One thing about the third world is that, despite the rampant corruption and street crime, that often threatens to take away any and everything that an enterprising small business man works hard for, they just keep sprouting up all over the place anyway. This fact by the way is proof positive, if ever it was needed, that capitalism is mankind's natural economic model.

When A Market Exists, Someone Will Attempt To Fill It.

This picture, which appeared on the BBC website, shows one such entrepreneur's street stall on Ngong road in Nairobi, Kenya.  As well the usual second hand clothes and bric-a-bric items, they have a sideline in sign writing.  So apart from the basic signs such as 'RESERVED PARKING', and the classic 'We give credit to those over 80 years accompanied by both parents', they also have my favourite 'LADYGAL ART'.

Lost Worlds

Sometimes history is brought alive in an unexpected way ...... Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a Russian aristocrat from pre-revolutionary Russia who invented his own colour picture technique (involving triple exposures on blue, red and green plates to create 'colour') ... while clever, it would not really ever take off because if any one moved inside the six seconds it took to take the shots, the the picture blurred. See the blue fingers on the self portrait.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii - self portait.

 

At the request of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, armed only with a special pass, he toured the Empire and took thousands of pictures between 1909-1912. He created a unique record of all the peoples, landscapes, industries and buildings under the Russians control. They are now owned by the US Library of Congress.

These pictures are from the period 1909 - 1911 ...... Quite stunning.

Bureaucrat in Bukhara

Emir Seyyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan the Emir of Bukhara

Jewish children with a teacher in Samarkand

Kalganov family zlatoust workers

Nikolaevskii Cathedral from southwest in Mozhaisk

Peasants harvesting hay in 1909

Prisoners and Guard

Prisoners in shackles

Saint Nil Stolbenskii Monastery

Sukhumi, Abkhazia and its bay

Water-carrier in Samarkand