How different life is from only a month ago. Like most of us, I find myself looking back with a sense of loss, thinking of the everyday things that made up our day to day lives. Poet, Maryalicia Post once wrote, “it is important to notice and give thanks for an ordinary day”. We haven’t had one of those for a while.
Personally, these uncharted waters have brought a lot of fear and anxiety but they have also shone a light on the things that truly matter to me. Life is, in some ways, simpler. My family and my friends and neighbours are revealed as the real wealth of my life. So, I am sharing a personal project that has become even more precious to me in the last few weeks, ‘Neighbours’.
It was inspired by some portraits I found of families in the new housing tracts in southern California in the 1960’s. I was amazed at how different everything, absolutely everything, in each image was. The ordinary becoming extraordinary with the passage of time. I invited all my neighbours to take part. They chose where the portrait was to be taken and I would capture the setting with absolutely basic lighting and post-production. I also asked each neighbour to include anything they thought represented them or told a story about their lives.
It threw up lots of interesting issues. There was the traditional British social reserve to get past, in fact the first family to agree were from Germany. It proved quite difficult to persuade some that I wasn’t a house burglar with an elaborate plan to case their properties and some just thought I was weird and wanted to have nothing to do with it.
In the end it took 5 years and out of 73 homes in my street 27 eventually said yes. Please click on the link to view full project: https://www.ranaldmac.com/neighbours-3
I’m looking forward to an ordinary day. Stay safe - Ranald
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