By Mike Innes
Throughout 2013 I produced several issues of Ordinary Things, a tiny homemade zine of my own photography of everyday subjects. These I mailed out to various interested people, including Paul of snapshotsofmalta.com. When it came to the end of the year, to round the project off I invited submissions for a contributors' special. From the images that people sent in, I selected the ones I liked best and which fitted most closely with the idea of Ordinary Things. Then I set about compiling the zine: printing out and guillotining the pages, making the cover, writing some accompanying text and trying to reach a decision about the order in which the pictures would appear.
One thing I was clear about from the start was that the image of the door submitted by Paul would be first in the zine proper. There were three main reasons for this. First, it engaged the viewer in a narrative which said, "What's on the other side of the door? If you want to know, you'll have to open it and look," thereby providing a natural way in to the other pictures. Second, there was in the photograph something colloquial - ordinary, even - which made it match the zine's ethos. Third, it was at the same time beautiful, mysterious, potentially either forbidding or inviting depending on your perspective or frame of mind, textured and characterful... all of which I was pleased to present as aspects of the everyday. In other words Paul's picture provided the ideal start to the final issue of Ordinary Things.
Ordinary Things may have come to an end but Mike still posts a selection of photos on Tumblr and on Twitter.
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