The Ordinary

Naturally, we’re drawn towards nostalgia: the old car from the 70s that your neighbour refuses to let go of; the resurgence in fashion from a decade long past; or the yearning for those Kodachrome colours (you know what I’m talking about, fellow photographer).

A nod to the past instantly elevates a photo. Or, so we tell ourselves.

For a long while, I hated getting even the edge of a 2020 Vauxhall Corsa in frame. It instantly tells you that we’re here, living in the 2020s, instead of in some distant decade where life was surely better — or at least, it looked better.

That was until I realised that some of my favourite photos from other photographers might not even be great photographs; they just captured a time I don’t remember, or one my memory is fuzzy on, where the nostalgia feels warm. Many photographers from the past, whom I love and adore, were simply capturing the ordinary. Nowadays, that ordinary is beginning to feel quite extraordinary, because it’s not our norm.