Return to the Market - Stuff Sacred and Profane

Louis Aragon, in Paris Peasant wrote that there are places in the midst of men, where the flora and fauna of the imagination are still allowed to thrive. While I find Chat u Chak market too crowded, overly hot and the most claustrophobic place I have ever been, it strikes me to be one such place. It is driven by naked commerce, not by the surrealist other and in fact unless there was money in Surrealism, most of the shop keepers and stall owners would most likely crack up laughing at such a pretentious claim. Yet amid the bustling cacophany and undirected mass, there is a hint of something long gone and lost in the West. It certainly ain't the mall of America and has a lot more stuff than any programmed and sanitized super store or mall could ever aspire to have.

I apologize for the quality of the photographs, I hope I have given you a sense of what it is like, please enjoy