Ordinary People #1

Walk down any street in any town across the planet and you'll find them, find us. Just ordinary people going about their every day business, doing what they do pretty much every day. Nothing special to see I agree, but take the time to stop and talk to them and you will invariably find something interesting, poignant, curious perhaps even surprising about them, about us all.

Perhaps they are just a new mum with their baby, getting out of the house, happy to chat with another person. An old man or woman going too and fro, not necessarily deserving of a second glance, not because of any wilful unkindness more perhaps because of a familiarity of form. That’s what old people look like, but once they were young with all the dreams, desires and passion we all feel, or perhaps not. A group of old guys walking together, lost in their conversation and friendship aware of each others past and present, doing nothing more important than going for a chat and a cuppa. One of them was in WWII, as paratrooper, bloody hell the other was in the SAS, the others just ordinary to us but special to the friends.

So, I’m the photographer stood there in the middle of the shopping centre with a white photo studio background in front of me and a camera around my neck, looking people directly in the eye and saying “hello, can I take a picture of you please?”

To which the reply is more often than not, “what me, what would you want to do that for, I’m no one special, what’s it for anyway”

“Well I’m just making pictures of ordinary people like you, same as me really, to have a record of the people who are here at this time and place. It’s nothing serious, more of a historical record”.

“Oh, well okay then, what do you want me to do”.

“Well just stand on that mark, look at me and when I say go, give me an expression, any expression you like and I’ll make just one picture”.

That’s how it goes all day, chatting with complete strangers, having a variety of success and failures at convincing these strangers to have their picture taken. Most people are more than happy to take part, it’s a bit of fun I would imagine, something different. There are young school girls quite evidently skiving off lessons with one in particular who, years later would marry my wife’s cousin. The local baptist minister turns up and is more than happy to chat and pose for a while, as is the lovely old lady in her electric buggy.

More join in and become part of the project, shoppers happy to show what they have just bought or shopkeepers with pamphlets explaining the latest deal they are having. A few others join in, some posing with enthusiasm others just standing there, presumably not wanting to make a fool of themselves. People of different ages, genders and skin colour, representative in a small way of the town of Newbury, just ordinary on the surface but all with a story to tell, if given the chance.

This was a point in time made all the more special or just interesting with the passage of time, a chance for ‘the normal’ to change, however slightly so this becomes different and unusual. Twenty years have passed since these images were make of ordinary people passing through the Kennet Centre shopping mall in the middle of Newbury. So much has changed and yet much remains the same, fashions, customs and personal attachments differ with time but what remains constant is the notion that people are anything but ordinary.

Wishing you fair light and full frames

Giles