Every now and again you come across an article in a newspaper or a video on YouTube that makes you think in a way that a cute cat video won’t. Sometimes it might be a new newspaper with just a different look or feel to it. Or a new book from an author that you don’t know. As a child I discovered the Independent newspaper being delivered all of a sudden and falling in love with the photography inside it. Looking at these images and being touched by them. Not just the subjects, but the pure beauty of the images. At that time journalism in the newspaper industry meant black and white images taken by people in the field, film cannisters being sent back to the newspaper, people editing the photos in the darkroom, and then either being scanned on drum scanners or plates being made which were then incorporated into the different page layouts and then printed on the presses.
Wow, that just took me back to having breakfast with my father every day as a child before school in the sun room gazing at the newspaper and the garden. The smell of coffee on my father’s breath, and him looking so dapper in pyjamas and his dressing gown. Amazing how one can time travel in one’s mind in a split second. Radio three on the radio which gave such a calmness to the whole situation.
But onwards and upwards! Recently you discover a YouTube channel that makes you think… I have a few that I watch on a regular basis, mostly about photography but I suppose that’s not a huge surprise to you! If I’m not mistaken, then this is the video that made me think a little further. I’ll just let you watch it first and then we can continue.
Seeing is so important in photography as it is in any visual art. I’m not going to pretend to be some wonderful artist. I will have a go at being a visual documenter, and I think I may have already touched on this in a previous article, but I’m going to do it again. Couldn’t find the article so it must have been a discussion on a comments section from a Facebook post. Anyway….
To me, Photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found this has little to with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them
Elliot Erwitt
That resonnated with me. It made me want to explore the idea of photographing the ordinary, but trying to see how light treated those scenes or things, and try to capture the beauty in it. Having worked recently with artificial light, I have become a lot more aware of light in my photography and how I might use it to get the most out of an image. The brief is to try and take a few photos a day of my ordinary every day life and the objects that are in front of my eyes, and publish them on an Instagram account.
Julia Margaret Cameron: soft-focus photographer with an iron will
From her housemaid to Alfred Tennyson, the indomitable Victorian wrestled everybody into her studio, dressing them up as characters from Shakespeare and the Bible. For years, these tableaux have been out of fashion – but two new shows cast this pioneering photographer in a new light
So let’s welcome Beauty in the Mundane, the new IJM account! This is a side project and will have it’s own little feeling to it. There is a new profile pic, or auto portrait for those who like think of themselves as better than the rest of us. One kind follower pointed out, “Hello ton autoportrait est flou🤔,” to which I replied, “Je sais. Mais ce n’est pas le fin du monde…. ça donne une impression de l’irréel or ce compte est que du réel. Mais merci de m’avoir prévenu.” O Irony! I then pointed him to an article from the Guardian, and started talking about the need to embrace imperfection.
So there is this new project to try and see this ordinary and try and see its inherent beauty, be that by form, shape, light, the was the light creates form as it falls on an object. Don’t expect huge landscape vistas, or portraits. It’s not that kind of thing. It might be utter bunkum and look like three shades of crap, but then again, it might not. There will certainly be an evolution as there should be be always. I don’t don’t where it will lead, or if it will be nothing more than just a personal photographic exercise. It might provide some high art. I don’t know yet,
I’ve just started. But if you don’t follow then you won’t know. Don’t want you missing out on anything do we….
IJM Photography 