Recycling in Shanghai

Staying alive
Shanghai, China
May 2012
This photo originally shared on Instagram

I'd like to kick off the workweek with an image of a stranger eking out a living on the streets of Shanghai.

I crossed this man's path 8 years ago as I traversed a giant city halfway around the world. I was on my way to a technology conference, shooting photos out the window of a chartered bus filled with journalists. And in an instant, the very epitome of globetrotting advantage came face-to-face with a single man just trying to survive by collecting bottles for recycling.

Closer to home and closer to now, we've had our own reckoning with the realities of entry-level work, a knee-jerk response to the onset of the pandemic, a simplistic realization that without the unseen greasing the skids of our cities, nothing works. Of course, that conversation only flared for a few weeks in March and April before it faded from our attention-deficit public conscience. The forgotten are only worth discussing, apparently, when society deems them to be trendy.

This man will never be trendy, but he never needed to be in the first place. Because what others think, in Shanghai, in my hometown, anywhere, should never matter to us.

But I'll never forget his face. Like so many strangers whose images I capture as I move through the streets of cities near and far, I hope against hope that he's safe and secure, that he's found some measure of peace in the years since our paths crossed for the first and only time.

#shanghai #china #throwback #may2012 #travel #travelphotography #travelgram #random #urban #street #photography #Nikon #nikonphotography #nikon_photography #dslr #zoom #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything