If the photographer looks intensely enough, he can find the secret images of our fears, joys and desires. Everything is speaking to us - every object -- Clarence John Laughlin, Photographer
I take delight in the ordinary -- everyday things, scenes, and objects form the major part of my photographic archives. To a large extent it's because I find the ordinary quite extraordinary. Rather than admit this as a character flaw, or a crack in the gateway to madness, I excuse myself with the self-held belief that anything ordinary, looked at intensely enough, becomes transformed.
Take coffee for example. I drink it every day and have, in recent years, acquired a taste for upscale coffee shops like Starbucks and Second Cup.
Starbucks Coffee
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)As I sit in my local Starbucks by the Port Credit lighthouse, I marvel at the infrastructure that has created a place where I can enjoy a beverage brewed from beans that do not grow in my country, in a building solely devoted to selling me luxury snacks and drinks, while automobiles drive by carrying people to and fro, rowers kayak up and down the river ouside the window, fishermen give one more hopeful cast, expensively-attired joggers drop in for a latté, and dog owners leash their pets to the bicycle rack so they can enjoy a sojourn before completing their journey. It's all symbolized in the photograph of the cup.
Reading Lamp
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)The reading lamp by my bedstand is one of the technical and cultural marvels of my life. The infrastructure of delivering (relatively) dependable and safe electric power to my house, and those of my neighbours, is monumental in its ubiquity, history, and, now, its ordinariness. I'm a compulsive reader and I read myself to sleep at night. Occasionally it's Shakespeare or Homer or Tennyson. More often it's fare such as Dune, Polgara, Lord of the Rings, and anything by Agatha Christie. And new books from the library. Without my night lamp, I would not have this vital pleasure.
Fruit Bowl
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)When I was a boy living in Rock Falls and, later, Lyndon, Illinois, oranges were still primarily a Christmas treat. They would be shipped in from exotic Florida or California. Most food was available seasonally. You had peaches in the late summer, early fall, and rhubarb in the spring. Worldwide food distribution now brings fresh produce to my local grocery year round. Fresh sweet corn in the middle of February, apples and oranges every week, bananas in plenty, not to mention an increasingly arcane selection of greens that I never saw when I lived on the farm.
Hose & Valve
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)I've lived on two different farms that had no indoor plumbing. All water was pumped, manually, from a well. I can now hook up a sprinkler, turn the knob, and water my lawn. Not to mention the indoor niceties of toilets and showers. Running water has been a fixture of everyday life for so long that it's taken for granted. But running water, except for some Roman engineering, is a very recent luxury.
Broom
(click on image for a larger, clearer view)I've developed a reputation among my family and some of my fellow photographers as being a photographer of the ordinary. Some undoubtedly see this as a quirk and I'm sure many find it boring. But I shall carry on. There is very little I see that I can truly think of as ordinary. Life is an extraordinary event. I am drawn to its many facets, no matter how well disguised they are in their ordinariness.
(22-Dec-2003, Revised 17-June-2004)
www.NorthernJourney.com -- gene@wilburn.ca