A Wooden Chick Is Not Your Frigid Or Unemotional Girlfriend – Part 1.
Wooden or bamboo chicks are oddly named roller blinds used by old shops to shield against our harsh tropical sun. The blinds are strips of wood or bamboo which were hand crafted, hand assembled and hand painted by specialists or craftsmen. They are now factory-made in China.
The vast surface space on a shopfront is a perfect medium to display advertising. Pil Chi Kit Teck Aun, the magical stool hardening pills, was one of the earliest to put their name on the front of a Chinese medicine shop through sponsorship. To me, they are an important part of small town landscape and a heritage, Yet they are mostly undocumented, ignored, unappreciated and fading away. literally.
This is a shop in Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur. Many photographers missed the visual opportunity the chicks created. When the chicks are down, there is light. See also recent post on Bekok, the frontier town of Endau Rompin.
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