Yesterday I spent the afternoon making photographs in Pasadena. I was getting familiar with the new Fujifilm X100F that I had purchased to replace the X100S I had been using as my primary camera for the past 5 years.
It was while walking through the streets that I spotted this shopping cart discarded in a parking lot. It reminded me of an assignment I had given myself years ago where I challenged myself to photograph nothing but shopping carts for the week.
I did that not because I have a fixation for them, but rather I had gotten frustrated with my photography. At the time, I was struggling with finding time to make images and even when I did, I felt that I was just endlessly repeating myself. I was taking pictures, but I wasn’t producing photographs that excited me or seemed new to me. I could certainly make a good picture, but I often felt that I had made the same image countless times before. I felt stuck.
So for a year I gave myself different assignments. I would choose one visual element and shoot that exclusively whenever I had the opportunity to make photographs. Some weeks, I focused on a color while another week I looked for a shape. At first, the assignment was fairly obvious but over time, I found myself trying to choose more challenging subject matter.
When the idea for shopping carts first popped into my head, I immediately dismissed it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend what little time that I had making photographs of shopping carts. But I took my resistance as a sign. If I was so averse to doing it, it was likely the exact thing that I should be doing. So, I reluctantly began my week thinking that this was one of the stupidest ideas I’d come up with.
Then I began to see shopping carts everywhere. Whether I was walking down the street or driving in my car, I would spot them. And each time I stopped to photograph them, I challenged myself to try and make an interesting photograph. I didn’t simply want to document its existence. Instead, I wanted to see whether I could come up with a photograph that was interesting to look at regardless of how mundane the subject matter was.
I began to examine a shopping cart in terms of light and shape but also how it related to the environment it was in. I paid attention to how light and shadow and color played a role in how I experienced it. With each image, I kept pushing further and further my ability to make the less than obvious choices.
By the end of the week, I was having a wonderful time photographing shopping carts. I certainly wouldn’t have thought that when I began the assignment. What propelled me forward was that I was challenging the way I saw the world not only through the camera but through my eyes. I realized that I too often disregard potential subject matter because they were ordinary and familiar. It wasn’t until I was forced to reconsider them in a visual and graphic way that I discovered a new and exciting way of seeing.
If you are struggling in a similar way, I recommend finding some mundane and ordinary subject matter to focus on for the week. I think that you’ll find as I did that that the challenge of making photographs of the ordinary will help you to learn the skills needed to make the mundane extraordinary.
Jacque Rupp is a documentary and fine-art photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A visual storyteller, Rupp uses the camera to challenge and question, offering a unique perspective on the world around us. In her most recent work, Rupp focuses on womanhood, using herself and experiences. As the subject matter, Rupp ventures off into the imagined, exploring issues of identity and purpose. Her new book is The Red Purse.