Shopping cart laborer.img453, with story

You used to see the store help gathering the carts and moving them back to the customer service lines.  It was a difficult job, often in bad weather, and required skills and strength, the idea to keep the momentum going and steer the line to the right area.  Much easier to say then do.  Nowadays they use a motor drive at the back of the line, similar to a tug boat on the river.

This is a photo I have been trying to capture for more than 40 years.  This image, taken in the early 1970s, is as close as I have come.

I wanted to show the effort and skill required, and wanted a long cart line horizontally to my camera with an unencumbered background of empty space.  I hope someday to get that image, but for now this will do.  It is a matter of timing and being in the right place.  Since as a documentarist I do not choreograph of manipulate my subjects, it just hasn't come together yet.

Taken with an 80mm F 2.8 Zeiss Planar, on a Hasselblad 500C using Kodak Tri-X 120 panchromatic film.

Feel free to download, just give me photo credit.

eugene spiegel