From: “100 Shopping Carts,” a work-in-progress by Brian Howell, who since June 2010 has been photographing shopping carts in Vancouver used by street vendors engaged in scavenging, recycling and related economic activity. Howell purchases the carts outright, with their contents, so that he can photograph them under controlled conditions in his studio. He pays the prices asked by the vendors, who say they have no difficulty acquiring replacement carts whenever they need them. The shopping cart on the right-hand end of the middle row was retained by its owner, a man named Cowboy, as it contains his personal belongings rather than commercial goods. The two new bicycles in the cart in the bottom row were returned by the photographer to their young owners, whom he found on craigslist.

—Mandelbrot