Rectangles of Reality - The Photography Of The Everyday

The joy that comes from recording the everyday, where you are.

To be right upfront about it - I quite enjoy making what many might consider to be a boring photograph. A photograph that I make with the absolute intention of recording something that is everyday, ordinary. Something I see all the time, but can easily overlook or take for granted.

I enjoy it because, for me, a photograph like that need not be boring at all. On the contrary, I believe it can be beautiful, joyous, and an affirmation of life. A superficially dull photograph can really have so much to offer.

Reality

To me, one of the very great advantages of the photography of the everyday is that I feel very little need (pressure?) to disguise the real. To make it palatable, or aesthetically pleasing. At least to my mind, this type of photography is a case of ‘what you see is what you get’. Of course, as a photographer I’m continually making decisions - almost instinctively - about point of view (composition, framing, crop, angle, etc etc) so nothing is ever completely unadulterated. But I think of these types of photographs being - in David Bailey’s words - ‘seeing-pictures’¹. They are what’s in front of me, and I love the simplicity and accessibility of that.

A photograph I made many years ago and which has really stayed with me. It was a revelation at the time that I could make a photograph like this and that it could be considered ‘work’.

Honesty

I really benefit from working this way because it suits me, it sits well with me. It aligns with the fact that I’m trying to be much more honest with myself now than ever before in my work. I find I no longer want to have to go into a studio, set up lighting, direct a subject or do any of the myriad things that might be necessary to create an image that is - to use David Bailey’s alternative definition - a ‘construction picture’². I want direct - I want to feel the image deeply. I want visceral connection, not the sometimes academic exercise of constructing or reconstructing reality.

Most important to me is that I really am only interested in making images that are true to me. And what is true to me is to make images of what moves me, and what energises me. Which is the actuality, the everydayness, of the very tiny part of this world in which I have the privilege to live and move. It helps me make sense of the wider (really-quite-hard-to-figure-out!) world; it gives me hope, and it inspires me to deliberately find beauty and choose joy.

I think the wonderful photographer and photojournalist Lee Miller (1907-1977) called photographs ‘rectangles of reality’ (though I can’t find the quote to attribute it properly). The phrase has stayed with me since I saw the V&A exhibition of her work in 2007. I love the thinking wrapped up in that description and I aspire to it in my work.

And I’m intensely grateful that I can do it where I am - in and around my own home, my garden, the street, village, town where I live, or the places I walk. I need nothing other than an eye and a camera. It seems to me almost too good to be true that the photos are already there - I just have to search them out, identify them, realise them (in a literal sense).

Daffodil on the path, 50 metres from my house.

Strength

And, for me, these types of photographs have a genuine strength. They seem to be able to be incredibly effective at telling stories and commenting about how we live. They can even help throw light on some of the huge issues we face in our world - those which seem intractable and overwhelming - by bringing them down to a personal, understandable scale. These types of photographs help me to see.

We Are On Are Own. Graffiti in Norwich 2009.

And they make me ask questions of myself. They are a way of me exploring how I feel about the world I live in, and interrogating (sometimes to the point of discomfort) how I personally live in it.

My home town

So I thought I’d leave you with a few shots from a short series of photographs I made (with these thoughts - vague and unformed - in my mind) during a walk through my home town of Fakenham, a very ordinary Norfolk market town. It was two or three years ago and I was actively choosing to photograph what some might consider uninteresting compositions, selecting the everyday and the quotidian (good word!!) with the intention of celebrating, finding joy and beauty, where I live.

[For those who like to know, these were taken on my completely wonderful would-be-lost-without-it Fujifilm X100F using Velvia film simulation].

Thanks for taking the time to read these thoughts. I hope they’ve made some sense and that you have enjoyed the photographs. Please do comment if you wish and/or maybe take a moment to share my post or subscribe using the buttons be

1. Mixed Moments - Bailey/Olympus Co-Production, London 1976 (Introduction)

2. Mixed Moments - Bailey/Olympus Co-Production, London 1976 (Introduction)