#26 CELEBRATE THE ORDINARY! PHOTOGRAPH IT!
I spoke recently with the gentleman of street Leonard Neumann and I asked him for an arbitrary number, three in this case, of photographers who have inspired him, links to those mentioned below. Leonard is known for his ability to make quiet thoughtful compositions of the ordinary and it’s a theme he returns to as he recounts his three, plus a couple of cheeky extras.
In other news, yesterday I worked. Hoorah. A photographer working, who’d have thought?
I travelled into London to film a musician who has spent the best part of a decade producing music in a project that involves other artists recording collaboratively around the world. This is a life’s work kind of project, much like Jack Lowe’s Lifeboat Station photographic project I started to introduce you to on yesterday’s show. He’s left creatively exhilarated, mentally exhausted, it is when I consider the calibre of musicians involved, the ultimate extraordinary work, yet the writer behind it, the creator who breathed life into his scores, just wants in many respects to remain ordinary. He wants to celebrate the work of others whilst humbly being the conduit for them to do so. There’s nothing ordinary about his music, but there’s something entirely refreshing about the altruistic nature of his enthusiasm for making others extraordinary.
Our youngest son turns ten today; happy birthday Bubs! He’s been looking ahead to this day with a sense of excitable yet nervous anticipation. He’s been worried that turning ten will somehow affect his status as a signed up child. That it will make him more grown up having double digits in his age. And he doesn’t want to be that kind of special, just yet. He’s enjoying his normal and he’s not ready for it to change. I’ve tried to tell him that you only really need consider your age when that double digit has numbers like 4, 5, 6 and 7 in front of it. But even then, that becomes your new normal, doesn’t it?
I like to think he’s a chip off the old block, in that he loves photographing. Specifically he loves to photograph trains. The absolute joy he receives from making pictures of trains was brought home, when just out of the most stringent of lockdown restrictions we travelled one Sunday to capture a picture of a particular diesel loco he’d spied operating on an app he pores over most days. We were there half an hour before it arrived. It ran through to the second, Swiss like in its punctuality. He filmed it, ran up to me, and hugged me. It seems that you have to be nine going on ten to find such pleasure in the ordinary.
So today, celebrate the ordinary, photograph it! Because as Leonard Neumann says, there is extraordinary in the ordinary.
FURTHER REFERENCE
Leonard Neumann’s main website
Paddy Summerfield, British photojournalist
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Finnish photographer
Bill Owens, American photojournalist
Tony Ray-Jones, British social documentary photographer
James Ravilious, photographer of rural life
In celebration of one ten year’s old’s fascination with trains! Happy birthday Bubs of bubspictures
Kate Cockman’s Everyday Positivity podcast
