Owners of video rental stores and exotic ear cleaners from Bangladesh have one thing in common: their services may soon be rendered obsolete. 30.04.2018, Sputnik International
Owners of video rental stores and exotic ear cleaners from Bangladesh have one thing in common: their services may soon be rendered obsolete.
As tech progress and societal development gains pace, some jobs drastically change or completely disappear. Humanity has already had to say goodbye to milkmen, phone operators and ice cutters for the better or worse.
More such disappearances are to come, as the list of endangered and rare skills has significantly grown. Ahead of May Day, Sputnik has picked photos of those who may reconsider their job choice now, but still remain loyal to their professions despite all odds. Some of them are the last of their kind.
Mohamed el-Maymony, a 38-year-old Egyptian darkroom technician, who also works as a local photojournalist, is one of the few remaining dark room technicians. He develops black-and-white and colour transparency slide film in Cairo's downtown for photography practitioners and enthusiasts.
Neon sign maker Wu Chi-kai from Hong Kong looks at one of his works. He is one of the last remaining craftsmen of his kind in the city, where darkness never really falls thanks to the 24-hour glow of a myriad lights and rich night life.
Fabio Garnero is one of the last gnomonist in Italy, who restores an ancient sundial. He uses traditional techniques to calculate and draw the sundial on the buildings, also spending a lot of time to catalogue and restore ancient sundials in Italy and in Europe.
Street clerk Candelaria Pinilla, 63, has a desk in front of the district taxing office in Bogota, Columbia, helping people with their paperwork. Street clerks are experts in filling out forms, documents and even in typing letters for their clients.
Iain Bell is a gas lamp lighter engineer from British Gas in central London. 1,500 gas lamps, some of which are 200 years old, continue to light some secret and beautiful corners of the British capital and are maintained by hand by a five-man team, supervised by Iain Bell.
Lebanese shoe repairman Joe Audi,55, has a workshop in the old part of the coastal city of Jounieh, north of Beirut in Lebanon. Audi says that his job will soon be disappeared as few like him are still reparing shoes or making handmade ones due to the huge industrialization of the footwear business.
Mohammad Ashgar, 65, an Indian rickshaw puller, remains committed to the 19th century transportation options. The hand-pulled rickshaw survives in India only in Kolkata after being outlawed elsewhere. The local puller's union puts the number of pullers in the city at 3,000. The union has resisted all previous attempts to ban their livelihood, previously organizing mass protests of their members against moves to stamp out the practice.
Uruguayan clockkeeper Abdel Ghaffar (born Raul Amaral) at the clock of the Cathedral in Montevideo is to watch if the biggest clock in the capital city of Uruguay is in order.
Nenan Jovanov, 70, works in his 64 years old perfume shop in Belgrade. The man literally grew up in this "time capsule" shop as third generation of a family business. "There used to be 23 perfume shops of this kind in Belgrade; now I am the only one left," says Nenan.
Jawdat al-Khour, 75, fixes a kerosene cookers in Gaza City, although more and more locals are moving away from traditional kerosene cookers to more efficient propane alternatives.
Mohammad Joynal, a Bangladeshi ear cleaner, works on streets of Dhaka, cleaning the ears of patients. Commercially produced cotton buds that are cheap and easily available are destroying the livelihoods of ear cleaners in Bangladesh, one of the signature features of street life in the densely populated South Asian country.
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