Debbie Nathan

I’ve been busy this week! Sorry for not posting till now.

Story in the NY Times today about yuppie males in the city who want pix taken of themselves proposing marriage to their girlfriends in Soho. They pay $500 for this service — to people like an ex-photojournalist featured in the article. The Times published some product by this apparent casualty of the 21st-century media, which is too busy running pictures of OJ, Dubya, Condi and Paris to commission much of the work that once lent romance and nobility to the term “photojournalist.”

Oh well. Where there’s a void, it’ll always get filled with something, no matter how weird. In Queens, that something is appliance-love paparazzi. Awhile back, I had a piece in the Times City Section about their work, accompanied by photos I ‘d submitted with the query (I’m not a pro photog, as my work posted on this blog clearly attests. I figured the Times would send their own people out, but no). Anyhow, they put some of my pix of pix on their website, but eventually took them down when the article got old. Meanwhile, every time I pass the storefront, there’s a new collection of astounding images showing individuals becoming engaged to their new gadgets. Here are some of the latest, along with my article from two years ago.

TUCKED in the shadow of the No. 7 elevated tracks in Woodside, Queens, the photographs resemble the Depression-era images captured by Walker Evans. The people in these pictures wear humble clothes and stark expressions. They are very poor, but they are not Americans from the 1930’s. They are 21st-century Ecuadoreans, framed by little luxuries sent by their kin from the big city.

One result of the economic crisis that hit Ecuador in the 1990’s was an exodus of immigrants to New York; almost 115,000 Ecuadoreans live in the city, according to the 2000 Census.

Many of the new arrivals, most of whom live in Queens, are young husbands who came to New York without their families. As soon as they get work, typically in construction or restaurants and delis, they send money home. They also send shiny new stoves, refrigerators, televisions, boom boxes and blenders.

A store in Woodside makes the sending easier. Creditos Economicos is a little showroom on Roosevelt Avenue and 67th Street that is crowded with appliances and Ecuadorean salespeople. Customers point to sample products, pay cash and supply addresses back home. A warehouse in Ecuador fills orders and delivers to anywhere in the country, from huts in the Andes to shacks by the Pacific.

To assure New York customers that their purchases have arrived, agents in Ecuador photograph the deliveries and send snapshots back to Queens. Some are taped to the store’s picture windows, concrete evidence of the grinding poverty that many Ecuadoreans in New York have come from, and the loved ones who have been left behind.