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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty One: The Marketplace -- crossroads of a community. > Sales clerk, Hubbell Trading Post, Ganado, Arizona, 2007
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08-NOV-2007

Sales clerk, Hubbell Trading Post, Ganado, Arizona, 2007

The Hubbell Trading Post at Ganado, Arizona, had served the Navajo Nation for over 100 years. It became part of the US National Park Service in 1967, and has been maintained as an active trading post ever since. Nothing has changed here over the years except the goods on the shelves and the prices. We were graciously welcomed by this Navajo sales clerk – he offered us coffee and cookies and told us about the room where works. While he was speaking to us he place his hand over his heart, which to me was a gesture of sincerity. This trading post has always been more than a store – it was the heart of the Navajo community in the region. Today it serves largely tourists, but the local Indians still meet and greet each other here.

Leica V-Lux 1
1/10s f/2.8 at 7.4mm iso200 full exif

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Phil Douglis11-Dec-2007 19:33
It is not focus that cause the blur in the sales clerk here, Patricia. It is the slow shutter speed that causes the blur-- he was animated, and even though the camera was sitting on the counter, he is slightly soft due to his own movement during the 1/10th of a second the shutter was open. I did not do it intentionally, but I liked the result for the same reasons you did. The animation brings energy to the image, and that energy can speak, as you say, of the ability of the Navajo to survive.
Patricia Lay-Dorsey11-Dec-2007 17:20
I am struck by y our choice of focus. The sales clerk is somewhat blurred while the water damage and rows of items behind him are in sharp focus. This gives the Navajo man a sense of representing the universal while the objects and the wall's evidence of time's capacity to damage material structures represent the particular. In that I see the Navaho people surviving while their artifacts and structures may not.
Phil Douglis24-Nov-2007 23:58
That is why I organized this image around the water damage, Tim. The trading post is very much the same as it always has been, except for the goods and prices. However time continues to erode its significance as the heart of Navajo society here, and there has been much "cultural pollution" over the years as well. The water damage, now the focal point of the trading room itself, speaks volumes here.
Tim May24-Nov-2007 18:15
The water damage is what calls me - it is as if it is the erosion of time and cultural pollution descending of the Navajo culture.
Phil Douglis19-Nov-2007 19:14
The items on the shelves offer us context -- they contrast to the man and to the water damage on the wall above them.
monique jansen19-Nov-2007 12:42
Wonderful colors as well and I like the way you can see what is for sale too
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