Tag Archives: Street photography

Mongo, Adventures in Trash

Mongo, according to the Cassel Dictionary of Slang, is New York lingo for any discarded object that is retrieved. When Ted moved to Manhattan from South Africa, where people constructed homes out of what other considered trash, he decorated his apartment with furniture he found on the streets.  Soon he realized he wasn’t the only person finding things of value in the garbage, and he began roaming the streets meeting all kind of collectors, united by their obsession with mongo.

This book (Ted Botha’s Mongo, adventure in Trash) is a record of his travails among the collectors, who are as varied as the kind of mongo they seek. They range from housewife to homeless man, from accountant to computer consultant; from retrenched bank worker to full-time collector. One man finds jewelry in the sludge of New York’s sewers; another has built one of the most extensive rare book collections in the city. The myriad reasons for collecting open a window into the range of human desires: some to make a political statement, others because it is an addiction. Collecting mongo is a longtime, universal phenomenon, and, as the publisher Bloomsbury says, is “at last receiving a worthy literary appreciation”

This photo-essay is the result of an assignment for the Peruvian magazine Etiqueta Negra during the winter 2004.

Test shot with Handevision Iberit 35mm f2.4 on Sony A7R

I got both lenses (that I had pre-ordered long time ago) The 35mm (KAL3524LCMB ) works great on my film and digital (Sony E mount with adapter) but the 24mm (KAL2424LCMB) doesn’t perfect fit on my Film body (It does fit on the Kipon adapter) and the lens risk to fall off the camera.

I took the lens back to the store, and tried another copy that they had there, with the same results. I asked to try the lens with modern Leica M-mount bodies (mine is a 70’s Leitz body) but they were none available.
When the first batch of 35mm arrived to the store, I tried one and had the same issue with the mount on the film camera -I remember reporting this to Adorama and to Xiaoming Zhang  (“The first batch of IBERIT lenses had some issues when attached to Leica M film cameras. The issue is now fixed:” REF: https://leicarumors.com/2017/03/19/quick-hands-on-review-of-the-handevision-iberit-lenses-on-a-leica-m10-camera.aspx/).
From Xiaoming I received the answer that the first batch of lenses only works with digital M body, but not with film body. Now the new lens fits both, digital as well as film.
Not been a Leica fanboy myself, I’m looking at this lenses with no bias, and I found the 35mm performing really good on film and Digital. I think this Iberit lenses will become a hot item but only if the mechanic quality is as good as the optical performance -the little time I played with the 24mm shown good sharpness and clean corners (not like most Zeiss or Leica wide angle lenses, that shows a strong magenta cast).

FYI, I kept the lens. I love it on film and digital, specially because it took me back to shooting film. Next will be the Iberit 24mm f2.4 when the next batch arrive to Adorama.