Caption: Teenage boy repairs his car in Lambton County, Ontario.
As I was going through the different photos in the Magnum collection on ARTstor I immediately liked this image. Taken in 1996, the only description for the photograph was "Lambton County. Mennonites." I think one of the things that stood out to me about this image was the somewhat timeless feel of it. Despite it having been taken in 1996, it looks like an image that wouldn't be out of place in the 1950s. I also like the way that the image is framed, with two of the figures not quite fitting into the borders. The girl in the image is stepping on a tool of some sort in the grass, while the boy under the car is looking over into the grass near him, perhaps looking for something. I think that The car is clearly well used and is covered in dirt and dust. The image makes me wonder about the relationships between the people in it, and what kind of conversations they might be having. I looked through Larry Towell's entire "The Mennonites" photo essay collection, and found many of the photographs to be good examples of documentary photography. Part of the collection deals with Mennonite migrant workers in Mexico, while the other part deals with Mennonite communities in Ontario, Canada. All of the images capture moments similar to this one, where the figures in the picture don't seem to be aware of the photographer's presence and are just going about their daily lives. Documentary photography is meant as a way of recording reality and providing evidence of something that happened, and these images serve as a way of recording the lives of the people in these Mennonite communities in Mexico and Canada.
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