portrait of a street

Sometimes I photograph the mundane. Ha ha – this is not the same as having mundane pictures of the not-mundane – I’ve got plenty of these! What I mean is that I find mundane objects, on reflection over their image in a photograph, not nearly as mundane as we think. Getting a bit tied in knots there, hope you get the drift. Here’s an example of a rather “mundane” house that makes, I think, a good picture:

(It’s a small image but you may see the rear end of a guy kneeling at the corner of the property – I did not notice him while taking the shot. No idea what he is up to.)

Driven to desperation because I have no recent pictures, I sometimes drive down a street or along a road, photographing houses that look interesting.

Now, what with one thing and another (chronic fatigue!) I have not been out much recently, so one day I drove along one (quite short) street and took a picture of every house on the right-hand side (there is parkland on the left), snapping each house as I went. I drove quietly along – call it slowly, I don’t want you to suspect any stealth in this activity – pulling into the left for a very brief stop and just snapping each house face on.

Not that the photographing of folks’ houses did not worry me for a bit. Then I found out that you can more-or-less photograph what you want from any public area, as long as you do not intend to make money out of it. Knowing that made me more at ease. Although I skip houses where there is bunch of the family outside … I can just imagine them phoning the police with my rego number, I can do without that sort of fuss, thanks very much.

[You really do have to be careful these days, especially, let's be clear, if you are an old guy like me. We were over in the Perth area in Western Australia over Christmas, paid a visit to Rockingham. A mother with two or three young girls were have a game of cricket on the foreshore and I thought that would look good with the Kwinana Power Station and heavy iondustry in the background. Of course I was prudent enough to ask the mother would she mind if I included their activities in the foreground. Well, as with hindsight you might expect, she was very suspiciuos, so I tried to explain but basically backed right off and left them to it. It would not have been surprising if she had phoned the police.]

Two things were coming together here – firstly, I like the banality of the houses in a country town – the older the better of course, don’t let me near these McMansions or my blood-pressure will sky-rocket. Do you see what the develeopers and builders are advertising seemingly as “first homes”? Back to J.K.Galbraith’s book about the creation of demand (The Affluent Society).

Anyway, to get to the point, here is a slideshow showing nearly all the houses in this short street in the town where we live – take time to savour the details of ordinary life (you’ve got to click the button that says “slideshow” at the top of the pictures).: