Boatmen take a break before unloading clay that will be used to make bricks in factories that line the Río Paraguay in Concepción, Paraguay.
“While we talked a lot about technology, sometimes the good ole stuff is pretty neat. These are two of six men who make two trips each day, seven days a week, to haul dirt from the other shore further up the river. It’s the first stage of making bricks.
“I found them in Paraguay, and they proceeded to show me which way to go to find the brick mill, where they were forming brinks and tiles by hand, drying them in the sun, preparing to bake them in a massive kiln that could
have been — and might have been — built in the early 1800s.”
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I put this extended caption in quotations because it is from an email I sent to Andrew Matusik, an outstanding and engaging photographer I am currently writing about for an upcoming issue of Rangefinder. I don’t normally share work (or much at all) with the photographers I interview, even as I dig deep, deep into their personal histories and creative lives.
There is something about Andrew — I suppose his exciting insistence that he is only at the very beginning of his career, even as he achieve success that many photographers can only dream of — that I find particularly refreshing.
Andrew responded to my email with some very insightful comments, along with this black-and-white conversion of the image. Thanks for the feedback, Andrew!
Andrew's B&W version. Which one do you like better, and why?