Regular followers of mine know that my photographic jive is portraiture. The moment. The person, the light, and the emotion. I don't often find value or emotion in inanimate objects, but here I find myself with a photographic extract of plastic, metal, and decay.
Once upon a time, this was a functioning ATM, but the city of Melbourne, Australia (and probably, its citizens) had a different notion for it.
In this image, it almost looks human, broken, disused, messy, and its "face" below the screen, with the cash dispenser below tells its own sort of story.
It makes me want to wander the streets and try to find more decrepit bits of every day tech just like this one. Seems like a gruesome subject, and an unfortunate commentary on our society, but this decay is all around us, all the time.
This was shot on my phone, and edited a little in Lightroom mobile to increase the contrast and adjust the framing of the shot to make it a bit more pleasing (and to also correct the distortion from the phone lens, to try and make the image as flat as possible).
I also like the value-less-ness (yes, I'm making up words) implied by the output of this machine. If cash isn't worth anything, then the ATM is worth even less.
Not worthless, but worth less.
I don't even know what the matter that has deposited itself upon this ATM is (or was) - but there's one thing for sure, I'm not about to culture it in a petri dish any time soon.
I think the results would be horrifying.
