I've even seen images of street vendors doing while-yo-wait portraits who process the shots inside their cameras (shemistry and all!)
Street vendors hardly support a photographic industry. In "developing countries," digital is the way it's going. The average person has never had access to film processing. It's the average people that drive the numbers.
It's really simple, and not connected to whether you like it or not. Everywhere I've been in poor countries, cell phones and digital cameras are what people buy. Much more than here in the US. Film as a broad-based technology has a very limited lifespan, at this point. The last time I was at B&H, the largest vendor of photographic stuff in the world, I was one of two people at the film counter. There were at least thirty people in line waiting at the digital counter. There's probably a smaller film counter and a lot more employees at the digital counter.
Like I said, it doesn't matter whether you like it or not, it's what's happening. When you can be in a country poorer than China and the only film cameras you see (besides mine) are the guys taking photos at tourist sites, you know what's happening.
Jeff Spirer
Photos: http://www.spirer.com
One People: http://www.onepeople.com/
Surfaces and Marks: http://www.withoutgrass.com
