Photograph: Simplicity - San Jose, California

Simplicity

Posted on 18 January 2012

A small appliance store front window with many colorful signs, San Jose, California.

This is another in the “walked out my front door and made photographs” series, being a store front that is within a half mile or so of my home. I’m a bit of a fan of photographing the fronts of these small businesses that appear to be anything but chain operations. Each one is its own unique universe and, I assume, reflects the owner’s personality in many ways including the cumulative effect of focusing on one small area of the world for many decades. I often wonder what it must be like to live in a world of vacuum cleaners for more than five decades – and I don’t mean to imply anything by that question beyond a serious interest in how our primary interests end up influencing how we experience and see the world.

The visual quality of these places also interests me. I can initially simply be overwhelmed by the details that must have accumulated over time – the many brightly colored signs, a few things hung on walls, displays of specialized equipment and materials with brand names I barely recognize. Yet there is a very carefully created order in all of this. It is fun – for me at least! – to spend some time looking at these scenes and starting to pick out the small details that I might not initially notice. (Of course, that is easier with a big print than it is with this little jpg!)

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