What We Don’t See Vs What We See
Find magic in the mundane through photography
Have you heard of the term Infraordinary? It was a concept made popular by Georges Perec, a French novelist and filmmaker from the 1970s. Infraordinary is about looking at and celebrating aspects of the ordinary, the banal and the everyday. Perec introduced the notion of Infraordinary as a counterpoint to the fact that most people are fascinated with extraordinary situations and scenes.
Extraordinary events are preferred over the mundane, random things in life. For instance, if a train were to derail, many photographers would want to take images of that accident. On a daily or regular basis, photographing a railway may perhaps not interest everybody.
Common places are often overlooked. We tend to go about our lives without noticing scenes and places that we pass by every day. We then miss the small details that could actually be elevated in a composition for a photograph. One can photograph these everyday spaces by finding new ways of seeing them.
The outcome could well be a photograph of something that no one has noticed or thought about. One can reveal so many nuances of a place, or a thing, by keenly observing it. In doing so, an additional layer of meaning can be created from the ordinary. The mundane can also become magical.
When you closely look at your own surroundings you will inevitably see things to photograph. Photography then ceases to be about a grand vacation, an event or about an extraordinary scene. Instead, it acquires a richness that derives from embracing the randomness in life. Photographing ordinary things may or may not give us name and fame. We may not necessarily take prints of what we photograph or send the images as entries for exhibitions.
Somewhere in all the seriousness about the process of photography one seems to have forgotten to have fun! The joy of taking photographs of the neighbourhood, the joy of making zines, the joy of seeing and capturing images can be an integral part of the photography journey that one has embarked upon.
I think when the focus shifts from “what to photograph” to “how to photograph the scene” we move to the next level of photography. Forget the extraordinary and focus on the ordinary. For instance empty chairs or an element in a parking lot can get us some great images. A torn newspaper on the street or a café can be as interesting as a landscape. A signage from your work space can make for an interesting image.
Here is a quote by Georges Perec which sums it all up:
“The infraordinary is, instead, that layer inside or just beneath the ordinary, and being able to see it involved the challenge of seeing through the habitual. This was no small task, given that invisibility is part of the very nature of habit.”
