I’ve been taking a photograph every day for over ten years.  That’s getting on for 4000 photos….

Why bother taking a photograph every day?  For me it has honed a habit of seeing, of being aware of the potential for making images from what surrounds me, be that the same places, the same journeys, the same routines.  Rather than seeing this sameness as a drawback, daily photography allows me to observe the differences in each day, to practise my powers of creativity and playfulness.  Daily photography is time-based, forged from an accumulation of impressions.  Things unremarkable that might pass unnoticed are collected and preserved.

In this context photography becomes an everyday activity, not just an activity reserved for special moments or beautiful scenes.  ‘Every day’ is both subject and process: the daily ritual of looking for a photograph has helped me see the potential in the mundane and to minimise a hierarchy between what is ‘beautiful’ and what is ‘ordinary’ and instead to see the potential in the most unlikely subjects.

Daily photography reduces the importance of the individual image and becomes an act steeped in repetition.  Today’s photograph is a momentary highlight soon to be replaced.

https://www.blipfoto.com/tracyellen

I recently showed fifty photographs from my ‘daily photography’ series as part of an exhibition entitled Aide Memoire – Everyday Aesthetics: Visual Conversations.  A group show with five other artists.  More info here.