Sunday, November 18

Well covered: Embracing the Ordinary

Photo © Paul Russell, cover design: Lewis Csizmazia

Photo © Paul Russell

Currently in bookshops is Simon & Schusters’ Embracing the Ordinary by Michael Foley, author of the bestselling The Age of Absurdity. The cover of Foley’s latest book features one of my photos from the Beside the Sea series, and is my first book front cover.

As I remember it, I got the impression that the man next to the supermarket trolley was a foreign tourist who just had to touch the trolley to confirm it was real. Maybe he was thinking “Who would leave a shopping trolley on a sandy beach? Surely it can’t be real. Crazy English.”

Embracing the Ordinary is a witty celebration the quotidian and seemingly mundane, and considers what insights philosophers (particularly James Joyce and Proust), anthropologists, psychologists and neuroscientists have given us. The parallels between the subject matter and street photography, which is often described along the lines of “finding the unusual in the everyday”, is clear.

My photo has a thematic link with the cover photo from Foley’s previous book, The Age of Absurdity - a photo by The Caravan Gallery

© The Caravan Gallery