/finding the ordinary

You are walking by that tall building on your way to work that you always do. The same alley you have run through for years and years. Cross the same place of worship you have given the nod of respect every day for as long as you can remember. They have always been there. Relegated to the background just like the extras filling the scene in a spy movie. You have never thought about photographing them. It’d be a soulless, mechanical copying of reality that you don’t even put your head up to see nowadays.

But one day while in a foreign town, you see metaphysical doppelgangers of your routine. People going about their routine. Not paying any mind to the magnificence that surrounds them. It stirs a vanguard revolt against ordinary ways of seeing inside of you. You pledge your allegiance to it. You take it upon yourself to photograph the beauty that locals consider ordinary to make them realize how extraordinary it all is. For them to not take their blessings for granted. For them to stop and stare, once in a while, at what’s beautiful in their own backyard.

And you vow that you’ll do the same once you return to your homeland, finding the ordinary and making it extra(ordinary) for all to take note and give the routine beauty the acknowledgment it deserves. But that’s a tale for another day. Here are some ordinary buildings in Paris that are extraordinary to my eyes.