Edward Western
Stephan Shore
Martin Parr
William Eggleston
objects: extended
In the recipe the Detail shot is integral to the balance of the story. It can provide that quite spot to just take a breath. There is a momentum to a visual story in the same way there is a song. If everything were the same note we wouldn’t engage with the song. We are after the undulating journey of it all. The peaks, the pause, thats what carries you along. This idea resonates through out all art forms. If you watched as many seasons of Project Runway as I did during Covid...you’ll know that it's the same with a fashion collection. You don’t send all of your biggest most extravagant pieces down the runway at once. The audience needs a build up, an ebb and a flow, or else the grandeur of the showstopper will be lost, devalued. When Whitney gets to that point in 'I Will Always Love You', you know the bit, it resonates the way it does because of the quiet, slow opening, the ebbs and flows in pitch and tone that came before it. So let's remember that undulating momentum. We'll be needing that.In 1970 a French writer Georges Perc coined the term 'infra-ordinary'. The term means the small everyday moments that people overlook. There are famous still life photographers like Edward Western who made a pepper somehow sensual and majestic. People like Stephen Shore and Martin Parr who incorporate real life still life objects into their work. Making something as ordinary as a carton of milk and a cup of tea the hero.In the beginning of photography, with the slowest of slow shutter speeds they had, it was easier and far more practical to have your subject be something that didn’t move and consequently blur. So still life photography became a stalwart of the practice.Objects fill our daily lives with a depth that we don’t always realise. Until there’s a death or a loss and the objects left behind are brimming with meaning and you can almost feel the person again in one of their objects. Objects for shrines are clues to a life lived.If you have kids you’ll know that feeling when special ‘lamby’ falls out of the buggy, in a sweaty panic to drop them at nursery, so you can finally have an hour to stare into space. If lost this chewed up object is just an object no more, it's a whole night's sleep. Like you need less of that. And I know, I know, I should have listened to my mother who said that I’m making a rod for my own back with this frankly disgustedly, slobbered over toy. But here we are anyway, roaming the streets in fear of another sleepless night if you don’t find it. When on my regular adventures looking down at the street for stuff, walking into lamposts as I go and I come across one of these toys, I'll send a secret prayer of strength to the parents. Then take a picture of it, obviously. My eldest kid and I once found a diamond ring on the top deck of the No 5. bus. A perfect diamond engagement ring, like the one you see in movies or the text emoji. Stupidly I gave it in to the bus driver who said he’d take care of it, you know with a wink and sly smile. I wondered ever since what was the story of that ring? Did they they have an argument and in a rage she took it off? Did it just fall off accidentally and she got home and panicked, looking everywhere? Did that spark an argument? Once I found this really poignant, sad note from a Mum to her son. Look for humour or maybe poignance. Maybe the item says something about whats happening in society or culture. Like when there were Covid masks on the floor or election flyers. Maybe it's something topical or newsworthy in culture, like a magazine that dropped falling open at some celebrity gossip. Maybe it's a seasonal item or like something dropped from the Pride parade. I'm partial to spilled things. I love the shapes the puddle makes and I like finding interesting shopping lists. My rule is not to move the thing. Probably the most hygienic move too. Just walk around it until you have the best composition. Because I always frame it in the bottom right of the image I walk around until it looks best in that position.