Essay: Photography and Everyday Life

U9 Essay

How can photography help us look at things in a new way and see things in our everyday life differently and understand why we overlook them?

Celeste Edwards

All the images used from the various artists are referenced, all the others ones were taken by me.

1. Introduction 2. Foundation 3. Literature 4. Analysis 5. Conclusion

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Bibliography

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+ project outline

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1. Introduction

Questioning creative practice and where it all comes from has led to the realization that ‘everyday life’ plays a big role in its inspiration. How do we get ideas to start creating? Is creativity born in boredom? By diving into this concept, I had never realised how hard it is to define and understand ‘everyday life’ and all its implications. In this essay, I want to understand to what extent creative practice and everyday life are related. I also wish to understand how everyday life links to my own practice, and I am hoping through the process of writing this essay to figure this out and to find words to describe some processes that are hard to explain.

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2. Foundation

Having been taking pictures with different mediums for a few years now, I have only just started questioning my relationship with the camera and relating my practice to photography theory on a larger scale. I have been wondering what motivates me to take pictures and understand more about my perspective - and how I see the world. Reflecting on my previous projects, I noticed some emerging themes: urbanism, architecture, graphic detail, mood, people’s behaviour to name a few. After studying certain famous photographers such as Vivian Maier and Garry Winogrand or even Robert Frank, I have concluded that my interest is often drawn towards banality and recording my routine.

picture taken in June 2019, in New York City

Primarily my aim is to share my viewpoint of a moment or a detail that I have encountered and to try and engage with the viewer. I will also further explore the links between how studying human beings in their natural habitat is a reflection of our current society.

To me, photographing the banality of life is a way of looking at it differently and trying to give an alternative meaning to things you witness and interact with daily.

In a way, it is about engaging with what you already know instead of just observing and being a spectator.

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I started my journey into this theme by attempting to understand what the process of photography truly means, and comprehending the different unconscious mechanisms that occur at the ‘click’ of the shutter led me to study in a past project the concept of ‘le flâneur’.

I soon realised that my way of taking pictures isn’t too far off from this concept. I like to force myself out of my comfort zone by jumping into the atmosphere of photographing without any preconceived idea and allowing myself to be surprised by what I find. The paradox behind the possibilities of photography and the power that decision-making has on the results of a picture or a project is a motive behind my practice. When you take a picture, you get to decide whether you are trying to make things very realistic or, decontextualise the subject and give them an alternative meaning to their original one. In a way you are in control of what you want to make.

In this essay, I will first try to understand and analyse different theories and the different ways that we can describe this blurry concept that can be ‘the everyday’. Simply, we can describe the everyday by all the activities and habits that constitute a person’s normal existence such as sleeping, waking up in the morning, drinking coffee, going to the supermarket, etc.

However, it can also be described as mundane, which means lacking interest or excitement, or in other words, dull. In modern times, everyday life is something that has always existed but is simultaneously in constant change. It is massively impacted by questions of politics, social issues, economics, and most importantly technology.

Secondly, I will explore looking at ordinary life through Photography and how you can revisit everyday life. For that, I will be using some case studies of several photographers such as Hannah La Follette Ryan and Sophie Calle alongside personal examples.

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picture taken in June 2019, in New York City

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With the current global pandemic, this topic is extremely relevant due to the impact it had. As a result of the situation, we have had to spend more time at home, people have had to rethink their everyday life and what it relies on. It is important to pay attention to what surrounds us to try and build our identity regardless of social standards and social pressure.

I think that this subject is important to me and other creatives because I like to constantly question the world that surrounds me.

Using the tool of photography is my personal way of expressing myself as it feels easy and natural to me, yet also the most accurate way I get to observe things in life. It is a way for me to challenge what we already know and to understand how they sometimes are just social constructs. The photographic gaze looks unconsciously for poetic micro-moments, and unsaid things in what seems to be insignificant and ‘usual’. Is the photographer’s goal then to hold a grasp onto these little details that hide in scenes that appear to have no importance? Everyday life is at the same time a broad and niche subject that has been addressed first in the 1930s with the emergence of the Mass Observation group in Britain. The collective was a mix of artists, filmmakers, and poets who were all amateur sociologists in quest of looking for progressive political views when researching into everyday life. This led to studies made of surveys and observations organized by the group or researchers between the observer and the observed to understand better what everyday life implies. It is a movement that has remerged in the 1980s and is still developing to this day.

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Through the interest of everyday life, I will also be looking into the essential piece of work written by Henri Lefebvre Critique of Everyday Life which is an interesting point of view that argues how capitalism has had such a massive impact on our everyday life and how it has resulted in mass consumption. His argument revolves around the fact that to him, everyday life is almost a science that is still very underdeveloped and disregarded compared to other sectors such as technology (Henri Lefebvre, 2008).

I will also be looking into other important pieces such as Everyday Life and Cultural Studies by Ben Highmore (Highmore, 2002) which has more of a social and cultural approach of banality and in which he associates different theories from different writers. He argues that the concept comes from a range of different things: boredom and aesthetics, and how intricate boredom can be and how it will differ depending on the point of view.

Image: (Dickson, 2020)

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picture taken in June 2019, in New York City

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3. Literature Trying to understand the logic of the everyday life

To understand the intricate link between our creative practice (and in this case with more of a focus on photography) and everyday life, we must take into account certain theories and concepts of how the banality of western life has been deeply impacted by modernism and capitalism.

In Critique of The Everyday Life, Henri Lefebvre claimed that this banality is universally experienced regardless of social class or background.

Rethinking the concept of banality could result in a social revolution, allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of people’s everyday lives.

(Henri Lefebvre, 1977) In his work, Henri Lefebvre establishes a straightforward definition of everyday life: “The human world is not defined simply by history, by culture, by totality or society as a whole, or by ideological and political superstructures. It is defined by this intermediate and mediating level: everyday life.” (Henri Lefebvre, 1977) His global analysis indicates an immediacy to what we call everyday life, it is what we all know, and what we all see every single day. This includes having a daily schedule: sleeping, eating, working, having some leisure time. However, this universal concept is somewhat hard to describe by its various components and different approaches experienced differently by everyone. Blanchot summarises this in Everyday Speech with: “The mundane is often overlooked, and very easily negatively referred to by its lack of excitement and made out of essential tasks and interactions with objects we use daily.” There are also many links to gender studies and psychological theories that have established how women in ancient times have been the most oppressed by the routine and banality of life, through being at home and taking care of the house and children.

(Blanchot and Hanson, 1987) This is a phenomenon that has changed a lot since the 1970s with women having a lot more legal rights and a change of dynamics can be discerned despite a lot of stereotypes that still reminiscent of those times which, as a result, are still deeply embedded in our patriarchal society.

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Importance of creative practice in the everyday life

In the sphere that we commonly know as the everyday, the difference between each other’s lives is often defined by social status, class and culture. As Ben Highmore mentions in his book Cultural Studies and Everyday Life, the use of ‘boredom’ both to mark social distinctions and to diagnose cultural domination points as one inescapable factor: everyday life which, like any other aspect of life, is distinguished by difference. For example, similar to the studies of women, social classes can also be observed. The working classes tend to have a very different daily life in contrast to upper classes. However, in these normal routines, there is something to find and to explore. In the ugly and mundane you can discover the beautiful; in the non-exceptional, there is something exceptional.

This is where creativity emerges. The mind is allowed to wander, suddenly creating space for the imagination. In his book, Kristin Ross expresses very clearly the impact the everyday has had on the arts during the 20th century: “But in that very triviality and baseness lay its seriousness, in the poverty and tedium of the routine lay the potential for creative energy” (Ross, 1997). Creativity becomes this door to another space where the routine and the banality are possible to escape. Susan Sontag also mentions creative practice as being a tool to access a sort of fulfilment that everyday life can’t always give us, she uses the example in Photography of Diane Arbus’ way of working “Arbus took photographs to show something simpler—that there is another world. The other world is to be found, as usual, inside this one” (Sontag, 1978). Susan Sontag explains how creativity lays in front of us and is to be explored fully to find ideas to start making something. This is important to consider because by getting inspired by what is around us there is potential for ideas, and creativity. It is what we make out of all the many things standing at our fingertips.

image: (Arbus, 1969).

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Ways of looking at life differently

To be able to relate creative practices to everyday life gives an opportunity for the mind and for the individual to rethink what they commonly see. It is the process of not overlooking life and things that we observe daily, and paying more attention to detail which can be easily done on a small to larger scale.

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In his book, “How to see” (Nelson, Stein and Bierut, 2017) George Nelson creates an elaborate way of looking at various things starting from right outside your doorstep (the streets, people, public transportation, etc.) to some more abstract things that requires a bit more imagination. This includes how you can give meaning to objects such as shapes and geometry. The concept of literacy is the ability to look these objects and understand how they can be turned into words, and subsequently into ideas. Nelson advances the idea that everything we observe in urban life wasn’t just made to be aesthetically pleasing but always had a pre-defined idea behind it. He also argues that they higher awareness you have to the everyday and the ability to explore beyond your knowledge allows your consciousness to recognise what is abnormal to you. This is summarised with: “awareness, when awakened, has a tendency to spread and expand” (Nelson, Stein and Bierut, 2017).

picture taken in May 2021, in London

Georges Perec explores this concept in his book “An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris” (Georges Perec and Lowenthal, 2010), where he spends three days sitting in a café in Saint-Sulpice observing and writing down everything he sees from the little window where he is sitting. His narrative depicts time and space fragments of Saint-Sulpice which are all stitched together by his representation of reality where every single detail captures a poetic and beautiful signification. Perec was fascinated by the everyday, in the things that escape our notice but are still important, and hold a major part in our lives. This is what he called ‘infraordinary’.

By using his creative practice, Perec was able to switch the focus from the big events and headlines to encourage people to question and rediscover the space, time, and poetry in their everyday lives.

By using this way of noticing things, he analysed every little detail he could see from his seat and started seeing things he would have never seen in any other situation.

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4. Analysis

Subwayhands is an ongoing project by photographer Hannah La Follette Ryan. Her work is an Instagram account compiled of images taken of people’s hands as they ride the subway. Choosing to use a social media platform allows her to reach a bigger audience, allowing more people to interact with it. This quick way of sharing images makes the process of showing work easier for the artist and the viewer.

Her niche approach to photography conveying the mundane moments of everyday life shows her interest in analyzing random strangers who she runs into daily, anthropologically. The simple use of a phone camera and random subjects makes her work very relatable and easy to dive into. She uses details that are considered as completely ordinary and mentions how this choice of style seems like “a reaction to a certain style of street photography that was only trying to capture the oddity and strangeness out of unusual faces”, (Varghese, 2020) and in a way more of an authentic way of capturing people that resonates with people who see them. What makes a picture that demonstrates certain matters universal? Is it just simple body gestures/behaviors?

image: (La Follette Ryan, 2020).

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Personally, this account presents a good representation of a place where a variety of people’s paths cross - the subway - a place where you can spend a lot of time.

Immortalising a moment in everyday life provides a different dimension, another life. In things we are so used to doing and habits that are so embedded within our lives we often forget the poetry of other people’s lives. Their context and social life can often be felt through everyday life. Different aspects convey a certain climate, reflecting what’s happening in our current society. Their hands have the ability to portray a hidden meaning, perhaps they are more reserved or even displaying an attachment to someone.

This Instagram account was still active during the pandemic despite the slowing down of outside life, communicating an accurate vision of what everyone was experiencing: cautiousness, anxiety, and fear. It was a very intricate anthropological approach to the pandemic focusing on the direct impact it had and the general care people seemed to develop towards their surroundings.

Hannah La Follette Ryan mentions how “I’ve learned how you can, with luck, anticipate a strong picture by closely observing body language”. Isolating such subjects in this example: hands - transforms them into abstract figures, aliens (Varghese, 2020).

This method of documentation is interesting however it raises certain questions towards the consent of those being photographed, the same way Susan Sontag has raised this matter in chapter “America, seen through Photographs, Darkly” (Sontag, 1978). The research method that she used here is mainly observational, and based on the artist’s eye, in a sense it is not very objective but very personal and yet so relatable. This example is linked to to the way of looking back at the mundane and finding beauty and poetry in things that we do every day when our brains are just stuck within our routine. Is our creative practice a way of breaking out of the loop and endless circle that can be everyday life?

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image: (La Follette Ryan, 2020)

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Sophie Calle’s work is mainly research on human vulnerability, identity, everyday, and intimacy. She works in a way that could be defined as informal and untraditional, that challenges everyday life by doing some debatable things (detective-like ability) such as following people around and investigating their own lives. Her projects tend to be controversial, and this one “The Hotel” (Calle, 2019) is an example of this. During this project, she was hired as a chambermaid in a hotel in Venice. However she would not simply clean and tidy after people as her job states, she would also investigate their lives by going through their stuff. The ethics of this method of working is very questionable, yet the results were always really fascinating. In this book, there is a mix of pictures and writing on what she finds.

image: (Calle, 1981)

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Sophie Calle documents what she could find through investigating strangers’ lives and going through their garbage. She would hide her camera and tape recorder in her mop bucket she was carrying and then would photograph the owner’s belongings. After that, whilst standing within someone’s personal space, she would think about her findings and write about what she imagined their lives to be like. Her act of capturing elements that weren’t made for anyone to see is arguably a form of thievery.

She catches a glimpse of people’s privacy without asking for consent.

Where is the limit between the public and the private sphere?

Are we allowed to have access and share something because we are intimate with the other person concerned, or is it because we share something in common and therefore have this unwritten agreement to share the experience of an object or a piece of clothing?

What do these acts say about us?

Are they private because of our attachment to them, or because of their time and use?

I admire her approach to photography and documentation because her writing completes her photography. She subverts the circle of everyday life in her methodology of working, her original work isn’t linear; there is no repetition in the way she works.

Her personal approach to art allows her to find new ways of exploring life and its experiences, such as: following strangers around to see where they bring her; and asking random people to sleep in her bed to photograph them, yet sustaining a journalistic approach. Her work seems rather a good example of using the everyday life to her advantage as she doesn’t follow a particular method to look for something surprising in the routine of the everyday but she still has an interesting way of proceeding.

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Going through some pictures I have taken in the past, I found a few which are somehow similar to Hannah La Follette Ryan’s. I liked this one because of its humor and its correlation to the social and political climate that was happening at the time. This is interesting to me because they convey different ways of looking, and although it seems to be a regular moment in Paris, some detail shows otherwise. Looking closer you realise that there are a lot of people meeting in groups.

A man in the foreground is wearing a mask which reminds us of the pandemic and the way he is lifting his arms shows a certain happiness and freedom to his gesture, almost as if he is trying to say through the image “look, we are free now!”.

This picture was a part of a film-roll I shot after the first lockdown in Paris which was very strict. From March to May we were stuck inside, and this was a time when we didn’t get to socialize with anyone apart from the people we lived with.

This park is next to my house in Paris so I will often walk through it to as well as spending time there.

Michel Blanchot sums up well this idea of the public space filled with strangers who all meet in one place: “the street, he notes, has the paradoxical character of having more importance than the places it connects, more living reality than the thing it reflects. The street renders public.” (Blanchot and Hanson, 1987)

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picture taken in May 2021, in Paris

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5. Conclusion

Through this essay I have discovered that for practitioners, the importance of their creative practice in their routine is major.

Capitalism has had a direct impact on our society and the way we interact with people and things. This essay is a way of understanding and unwrapping the large concept of everyday life by examining the basics matters raised and subjects surrounding this question.

Through Hannah La Follette Ryan’s example of work, we have been able to establish how in the everyday life it is possible to find inspiration and ideas, and how there is a way to understand our relation to others and objects through engaging with them rather than just overlooking them. In contrast, in Sophie Calle’s work, she demonstrated that there is not an only way of exploring everyday life, she tries to find tools for her practice in it and this is what she keeps challenging in her work.

Using the tool of photography is an alternative way of looking at the everyday life and giving it a second meaning through capturing a moment in time. There is only much value to it if you capture it.

Though this subject is large, I would love to explore its different aspects on a deeper end and understand better its anthropological aspect in relation to people’s gestures and behaviours.

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6. Bibliography

Busch, A. (2005). The uncommon life of common objects: essays on design and the everyday. New York: Metropolis Books.

Calle, S. (2019). L’hôtel. Arles: Actes Sud. Debord, G. (1967). Society of the spectacle. Detroit, Michigan: Black & Red. Henri Lefe bvre (2008). Critique of everyday life: the one-volume edition. London: Verso.

Highmore, B. (2002). Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: an Introduction.

London U.A.: Routledge.

Johnstone, S. (2008). The everyday. London: Whitechapel; Cambridge, Mass.

Miller, D. (2008). The comfort of things. Cambridge; Malden, Ma: Polity.

Nelson, G., Stein, K. and Bierut, M. (2017). How to see visual adventures in a World god never made. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Georges Perec and Lowenthal, M. (2010). An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris. Cambridge, Mass. ; New York: Wakefield Press.

Rosner, H. (2020). The Anxious Hands of New York’s Subway Riders in the Face of the Coronavirus. [online] The New Yorker. Available at: https://www. newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-anxious-hands-of-new-yorks-subway-riders-in-the-face-of-the-coronavirus [Accessed 10 Oct. 2021].

Sanjana Varghese (2020). How the @subwayhands project tenderly documented pre-pandemic life. [online] I-d. Available at: https://i-d.vice.com/en_ uk/article/n7jppw/instagram-subwayhands-photography-interview-covid19 [Accessed 10 Oct. 2021]. ‌ Sontag, S. (1978b). On Photography. London, Great Britain: Allen Lane.

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