The Perfume Counters

Every high-end mall department store has its perfume counters, and in

a major city in Ukraine an entire mall hosts these obligatory places

where you can get sprayed with very expensive scents. Your ratings

and critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or

very critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment;

please share your superior photographic knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

I see this picture as a study in human behavior. Aesthetically I find the vanishing point through the repetition of patterns interesting starting with the women, the walls displaying beauty products and the lights on the ceiling.

Most women realize the role that cosmetics play in order to attract the opposite sex. It's all part of the game of seduction. How fitting to have this scene unfold under the watchful and perhaps critical gaze of the male model advertising a fragrance named "Attitude".

I also find the placement of characters interesting. The male model points us diagonally to the girl sitting on the stool while she looks at us directly.

Is the name of the store "Bonjour"? A useful introductory word in this game.

I was disappointed in the ratings on this, not because I worried if it was a good photo or not (it is, in my opinion, and as good as I can do), but because the raters couldn't see it. I guess I failed to communicate or I stretched my genre boundaries a little when nobody was looking or expecting something so different.

This is the complete 90 degree approach which some of my work has featured, even the photo of the guy walking down the library steps almost in abstract -- taken from directly overhead is a 90-degree shot but in a different direction -- downward.

Sometimes such shots are not appreciated, but I like them for the possible use of lines and angles -- most often the 90-degree angle common to buildings where they intersect the ground, walls where they intersect floors (as above) and so on. The use of the building wall or the interior wall (or advertising here on panels) allows me to fill the frame, and thus 'keep it interesting', at least I hope.

I was struck by this scene when I walked into Dnepropetrovsk's ultra-modern and brand new (one year old) shopping mall . . . and its similarity in effect to any Macy's or Nordstrom's or Allied Stores mega department store that one would find in a downtown or a massive regional mall in the United States -- in effect this photo represents a universality in approach to sales of scents.

By the way, scents have the highest markup (with thier cousin, cosmetics) of almost any product made, or so they tell me.

That allows for massive budgets to market them; including expensive leased space in huge department stores, use of their own salespeople (spokesmodel--demonstrators) instead of department store personnal (did you know that?) and heavy use of the best advertising with expensive photography showing the supposed benefits one is expected to 'experience' if only one purchases this or that scent, or this or that cosmetic . . . or better, all of them offered by one company.

And if you don't believe your life will improve -- particularly your love life- then you haven't listened closely to the saleswomen -- demonstrators who are hired for their lack of need for cosmetics or scents to attract the opposite sex because they're usually quite naturally beautiful.

Witness the body (and face) of the woman depicted in partial silhouettte above. Her lower body and middle body should give an indication of her perfect figure, and she has a very attractive face. Such women abound in Ukraine, so the scent marketers have a good choice of women to choose from in picking their sales force.

Young women in Ukraine are famous for their wonderful figures --- want to go to the beach, just put on a bikini, no diet needed/most women are bikini thin in their earlier years (but ye gads when they get older . . . at least most older ones after a gaggle of kids have been raised - and thinness becomes just a distant memory for many.)

That all vanishes within 10 years after marriage, or at least it has, despite a new generation of Ukrainian women who do take care of themselves into marriage and maybe someday soon into their more mature years.

Even so, life is hard, and women of their mid '20s often look a little more 'tired' and 'haggard' than women of similar age in America, even though these Ukrainian young women have generally far better figures -- lack of money for essentials; often living with parents, having to latch onto a clever (a better word here than 'smart' because clever means you know how to apply your intelligence) man who often is quite older, to support a girl's needs.

And the men at first do satisfy every need, but often give up when the woman needs him most; just as she has had the first or second child, when so many men then wander among the other famously beautiful Ukrainian women.

As one man I know said to me: 'I love my wife so much, I can't tell you. She has given me a boy. She beautiful. She's wonderful. (But if she calls, tell her you were with me Saturday)'

In other words, the men cheat. In fact, the tendency to cheat on many things in Ukraine and its sister country, Russia, is deeply ingrained, and students in their lessons learn words for cheating among their first lessons (and they have fairy tales about drunks and drinking -- while a trip on a regional bus reveals that the whole passenger set may be treated to a movie on the bus tv screens like 'Helen of Troy' which features prominently nudity and graphic rape scenes.)

Little is held back from the youth; they can drink as soon as they can pay for a beer, and I have sometimes seen 12-year-olds drinking beer in a group if they can scratch enough money up.

In fact, beer, and its alcohol cousins are the universal elixer -- the great tranquilizer of the people. Marx had it wrong: it wasn't religion, but alcohol.

But I read today in this week's edition of 'Kiev Post' (a Kiev English language newspaper which is pretty well written) of the enormous efforts employers (in Kiev at least) are going to to attract and keep good managerial and professional employees at prevailing wages, because there are too many jobs for qualified people (but pay is still absurdly low by Western standards, and young workers of three or four years experience may soon become middle managers, headed toward the top -- something unheard of in the West.

Some of the best and brightest become quite wealthy before their early '30s. The hustlers and bright ones make it and make it well, the more serious ones and the ones who are not 'hustlers' and thus not applying their 'cleverness' may end up in low-paid professions where they accept 'peanuts' to apply their love for a certain subject or career that is not in commerce, thus not highly remunerated.

This photo is partly about those people -- the young ones -- who are achieving wealth that is not common but still spread among substantial numbers, when one considers that in Dnepropetrovsk there are over 1 million people and a couple of hundred thousand in surrounding areas.

Some can afford to buy expensive things, and some think it's a sign of 'having made it' not to ask prices and to pay anything that is asked, as if haggling were somehow demeaning and 'being taken to the cleaners' by a sales person (for higher priced goods, such as cars, luxury watches, etc.) is a badge of honor -- like the gambler who takes pride in how much he's lost because it means he's a 'player'.

There are wealthy and growing wealthy young people in Ukraine who are 'players' and drive Mercedes and BMWs, but their homes in flats might look like slums to even a slum-dwelling American, at least on the outside. The insides might be filled with luxury goods, but the mailboxes might be vandalized and there might be three locks on the door, which is universally never left unlocked, even if a person is home. People warn all the time of the potential for being stolen from (but not things like 'armed robbery' which is pretty nonexistent, compared to the USA.)

I live in a place you'd be sure was a slum if you walked by or in the lobby (although it's very nice and modern inside). But it's a security building with guards (grandmothers who know everything) and who control the remote front door lock system (which with my cameras is one reason I live in that building), and although it's not the most expensive building in town, it ranks high enough to have a 'named' and many people in the city know that name of my apartment building as being a 'prestigious building'. I just see vandalized mailboxes, burnt out corridor lights, elevators which usually don't work, and graffiti (though in far smaller amount than other, nonsecurity, buildings.)

Personally, like many Americans I'm not above haggling for the price of a car or shopping at Costco, because I like to pay the smallest amount necessary -- something that would be lost on a nouveau riche Ukrainian.

Few can shop these counters, but in a few years the wealth will trickle through, I think, and more and more will be buying at these places -- led first by the beautiful young women who have a man in tow who'll buy them anything because they're so beautiful.

Women here trade on their beauty as a commodity, and the thought of a slender young woman having more than an occasional helping of french fries or similar fare is abhorrent, although many live primarily in winter on a diet of potatoes, and in summer on a luxurious bounty of vegetables and fruit from family and 'dacha' gardens or produce sold on every highway side -- abundant and fresh - which serves a purpose -- kind of like 'victory gardens' did in the US during World War II, which helped the US feed itself and send its best food to soldiers overseas.

Although politics are caught up once again in their stalemate and a Premier yet to be named, there is a transition going on and being planned after the recent elections in which nobody 'won' a clear victory.

The sides are being tugged towards Russia, one way, and toward the West and NATO(which Russia abhors) on the other, and there surely will be political shenanigans before the new Premier is chosen and sworn in.

But life is getting better generally, day by day, as the job ads in Kyiv show, even though it will be slow to trickle down. The currency is reasonably stable and no threat of fear of future crashes as happened in 1998, and things are looking up. Banks have sproute deverywhere; there were almost none three years ago, and these banks are being backed by European banks for the most part, giving them stability and good management.

My money's on the Ukrainians having a more wealthy country in a few years, especially after they get their massively fertile agriculture adapted to high-yield Western agricultural methods, seeds, and crops.

Armies of agriculture reps from Western countries have spent years scouring the country, waiting for the day when they will have buyers for th

John, don't thank me for enduring your post. On the contrary, I find your comments about life in Ukraine fascinating. Through your words you allow me to take a glimpse at a society that is not that different from ours in many ways. If anything they resonate with some universal truths that apply to all of us. In that way your words are just as revealing as your photos.

It's true that friendships in the US can be very callous in nature. Do you think that is one of the reasons why American men have the tendency to be more monogamous? I mean, apart from the moral aspect and the repercusion of guilt. Is it because men in America tend to look at his half not only as a wife but also as a best friend?

It seems that most people in Ukraine heed to the words of Michiavelli and "The Prince" is quite a popular book read in schools. ;)

Beauty, especially in a woman, has always been a powerful currency through the ages. Women in some cultures have a better understanding of its value than others.

Thank for sharing your thoughts John.