Totems

 

I am fascinated by street vendors and have much affection for the work by John Thomson and Eugene Atget who photographed the various types of street merchant and performer of London and Paris respectively in the late 19th century.  Alain Delorme's series Manufactured Totems sits very well with Atget and Thomson as it explores street vendors in Shanghai touting their wares in an everchanging city at the dawn of a new age.  Alain calls these enormous precariously- balanced loads totems and thinks they are works of art themselves;  movable colourful sculptures which defy the law of gravity.  http://www.alaindelorme.com/?p=works