Scrap Metal Signs
Why oh why didn't I ask Ignat about the red paint? I was walking in a tough neighborhood, snapping photos, when I saw his sign soliciting scrap metal. These posters are found frequently on roadsides, usually on the smokier outskirts, with a list of metals that are "bought for a high price" [приём дорого; priyom dorogo]: copper gets the most tenges and the most demand, then brass, aluminum, lead, stainless steel, magnesium, zinc and "black scrap" [чёрный лом; chyorny lom], or assorted ferrous metals. Batteries and radiators are also traded in for cash. The signs are so common (and so consistent in their design, handpainted red letters on white or silver sheets) that I had started a photo collection for them. Ignat did not approve of the collection. In fact, he told me to delete the photo of his sign, "NOW."
He was a thickset Uyghur in a muscle shirt, not the kind of guy I'm used to arguing with, but I didn't feel like getting pushed around so I gave him some sanctimonious weaseling about my rights as a photographer and him minding his own business. "Is it illegal or something?" I asked, and that's when his eyes softened a bit and he explained his apprehension. The police come around raiding the places, he said, and he couldn't risk having me advertise his business. Okay, okay. Some empathy bubbled up. I agreed to delete the photo, and when I spoke to him in Kazakh (not sure yet of his ethnicity), his face was taken over by the sweetest grin that you've ever seen on a scrap collector, and he invited me into his yard to see his collection. That's when he introduced himself, a Muslim from China with the name of an old Russian man.
Actually, when I asked Ignat where he was from, he told me he was from Uyghurstan. "Oh, like Xinjiang, in China?" I asked? He pretended like he'd never heard of it before. "No, Uyghurstan." His people's culture was being slowly extinguished by the Han, and he did not give the official name any respect. Regardless of its name, Xinjiang or Uyghurstan was the destination for Ignat's scrap, where it would be smelted and recycled. China is the world's second largest importer of this metal, after Turkey, and it was so voracious that it was vacuuming up all the scrap next door, chewing up the crumbling remains of Soviet factories and transforming them into something new. For now, his complicated homeland's appetite for rusty leftovers are what put the bread on Ignat's table. He was proud of the business he had, and glad I had deleted his photo. "Let's be friends", he offered, taking my phone number. "I'll send you funny videos." We chatted for a few days after that, but I never got around to asking him why scrap metal sign makers only use red paint. Perhaps it's not too late. Ignat, are you out there?
He was a thickset Uyghur in a muscle shirt, not the kind of guy I'm used to arguing with, but I didn't feel like getting pushed around so I gave him some sanctimonious weaseling about my rights as a photographer and him minding his own business. "Is it illegal or something?" I asked, and that's when his eyes softened a bit and he explained his apprehension. The police come around raiding the places, he said, and he couldn't risk having me advertise his business. Okay, okay. Some empathy bubbled up. I agreed to delete the photo, and when I spoke to him in Kazakh (not sure yet of his ethnicity), his face was taken over by the sweetest grin that you've ever seen on a scrap collector, and he invited me into his yard to see his collection. That's when he introduced himself, a Muslim from China with the name of an old Russian man.
Actually, when I asked Ignat where he was from, he told me he was from Uyghurstan. "Oh, like Xinjiang, in China?" I asked? He pretended like he'd never heard of it before. "No, Uyghurstan." His people's culture was being slowly extinguished by the Han, and he did not give the official name any respect. Regardless of its name, Xinjiang or Uyghurstan was the destination for Ignat's scrap, where it would be smelted and recycled. China is the world's second largest importer of this metal, after Turkey, and it was so voracious that it was vacuuming up all the scrap next door, chewing up the crumbling remains of Soviet factories and transforming them into something new. For now, his complicated homeland's appetite for rusty leftovers are what put the bread on Ignat's table. He was proud of the business he had, and glad I had deleted his photo. "Let's be friends", he offered, taking my phone number. "I'll send you funny videos." We chatted for a few days after that, but I never got around to asking him why scrap metal sign makers only use red paint. Perhaps it's not too late. Ignat, are you out there?
