A well-worn door eye-latch presented an opportunity to focus on one simple thing – a household object that is devoid of ornamentation yet has a beauty of its own.
This was one of my earliest lessons in photography – that good pictures were to be found in the most ordinary of circumstances. By focusing on detail, the intrinsic qualities of any object could be revealed.
This also marked a transition of sorts for me – I was determined to become a serious practitioner of the art of photography. I naively decided that I would specialize in black and white film. My early heroes were Edward Weston, Walker Evans, and Alfred Hitchcock, each renowned for monochrome images.
But even Hitchcock turned to colour… and this one simple experiment made me realize that subtlety and mood were achievable with the use of colour film. That in turn led me to the joys of using Kodachrome and Fujichrome – and learning what each offered: Kodak with its softer and warmer colour balance, and Fuji with a cool and often electric blue.
“One must go beyond logic to experience what is large in what is small.” ~ Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space
Location: Brandon, Manitoba
Date: Summer 1980
Source: Pentax ME Super with Kodacolor 125 ASA
To see all of our Uncommon Images posts, click here.
