Shoes, a sack and simple brooms on a wooden platform
Culture & tradition,  Lens-Artists,  Themed galleries,  Travel in general

Gallery: finding the ordinary extraordinary

September 9, 2024 / 57 Comments

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary

Blaise Pascal

Is there such a thing as an ordinary object? And is ordinary the same for everyone? One thing that travel teaches (among many other things) is that one person’s ordinary can look extraordinary to another. The things we take for granted in our lives, the little things that make life easier, may not be the same in other parts of the world, or may not exist at all, at least for the average family.

I hadn’t heard of Ellen Dissanayake, an American anthropologist, lecturer and writer. But I loved this quote by her when I came across it:

We can begin a discussion of artmaking by noting that from very early (as long ago as 200,000 years), humans have been naturally attracted to the extraordinary as a dimension of experience and that at some point they seem also to have been moved to make the ordinary extraordinary – that is, to shape or elaborate everyday, mundane reality and thereby transform it into something special, different from the everyday.

Ellen Dissanayake

So for Ritva’s Lens Artists challenge on the theme of ‘common objects’ I thought it would be interesting to share some images of objects that struck me as extraordinary enough to photograph. My feature photo was taken in a so-called minority village in northern Laos, Phou Taen Khamu. A clutter of ordinary objects on the wooden platform outside a simple home seemed interesting enough to me, a visitor with a very different way of life and home, that I felt the urge to capture the scene. The same was true of several other scenes in this village and the surrounding area, which I’ve included below along with others from Vietnam, India, Madagascar, Senegal, Morocco, Cape Verde and Oman. And if you too are intrigued by the way of life among the northern tribes of Laos, see my previous post about the village blacksmith in Phou Taen Khamu.

Sprays of stiff grass tied to sticks

Traditional grass brooms in a Laos roadside market

Bamboo sticks with looped reeds at the end

Traps for small birds for sale at the same Laos market

Metal rack with fish on it on a corrugated roof

Rooftop fish-drying rack, Laos

Shop with drills, cement, hats and more outside

Hardware store in Hanoi, Vietnam

Sanitaryware shop in Kovalam, Kerala

Colourful toilets and washbasins on a display
Simple metal scales

Shop scales in Kovalam, Kerala

Pots being carried on a motorbike in Bundi, Rajasthan

Battered metal pots
Oil lamp hanging from a roof beam
Oil lamp hanging from a stick on an adobe wall

Oil lamps in Oman

Old sewing machine with elaborate decorations

Sewing machine on a tailor’s stall in the market in Praia, Santiago, Cape Verde

Unevenly shaped bowls in a pile

Bowls made from large gourds at Ngueniene market, Senegal

Small glass of tea and shiny metal pot on a tray

Teapot and glass, Essaouira, Morocco

Stone grinding wheel with nuts

Stone wheel for grinding argan nuts to extract their oil, Ourika Valley, Morocco

Brooms with bristles in primary colours

Colourful brooms for sale in Antsiranana, Madagascar

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