What goes around comes around

click photo to enlarge

No one who knows me would say I was at the leading edge of fashion. I search out boring, sludge-coloured clothes and moan if I can't find the same garments from one decade to the next. And yet, I was wearing trainers as casual footwear in 1970! I suppose someone will tell me that wasn't unusual back then, so to bolster my credentials (I think!) I will say they were white with turquoise stripes, were made by Dunlop, and they definitely weren't black and white baseball boots (which were quite fashionable at the time).

That's probably the last occasion I was in fashion. However, I do notice fashion, even if I don't wear it, and I'm now old enough to see styles and colours coming round for the second or third time. I went to buy a lampshade the other day. The shop I entered offered any colour you liked as long as it was beige. On display nearby were cushions in various shades of brown, cream, or brown and cream. Ah, I thought - we're back in the 1970s again! I'm also old enough to know that an object becomes fashionable as soon as everyone's got rid of the old, out-moded version. I predicted that stained glass details in house windows would make a come-back in the 1980s and 1990s, because in the 1970s people were throwing the Victorian and 1930s versions away with great disdain. But, I wouldn't have predicted the re-appearance of the mortar and pestle in kitchens. I'm sure there is a high-tech kitchen gizmo that whines and grinds and produces what this old-fashioned pairing does. Yet, many kitchens I know have a copy of the original article, including my own! Truly, what goes around, comes around.

The other week, I thought I'd combine 1970s colours with a shot of our mortar and pestle. I set up this still-life to provide an assortment of textures, colours, tones and shapes. As with recent images I put the collection on a mirror, and lit it with an on-camera TTL flash bounced off a home-made reflector. I used a 70mm macro lens (35mm equivalent), with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f18 at 1/80 second), ISO 100, with -1.0EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen