Butcher familiarity
Taking photographs of the familiar is curiously difficult. I doubt if it is just me, but going to the shops never makes me want to have a camera to hand. Yet much of what I see would be of interest to friends in foreign parts, just as this butcher might interest you. Butchers pass me by at home, while absorbing me abroad. Exoticism matters - the bench, the head dresses, the crowds around the butcher, contrast with my butcher experiences. It makes me look, catches my eye, makes the familiar unfamiliar. Change, contrast, these wake us up from our habitual slumber. I know some photographers who can generate that same level of wakefulness for sights nearer home. Now there is a gift - making the familiar strange.
familiarity - Go to a little more on familiarity, and Coleridge’s thoughts on its place in poetry, in this site's Mosaic Section.
The market, where this photo was taken, is at the town of Thuận Châu, just north-west of Sơn La City, in north-western Vietnam.
The photograph was taken on a Canon PowerShot S2 IS on 19/01/2008 at 9.30 am. 1/30th at f/3.5 ISO rated at 50. Focal length equivalent to 187 mm on a 35 lens.
Saturday 7th November 2026
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