No 4: EXTRAORDINARY IN THE ORDINARY

JOELLE WILLIAMS

I’ve always gravitated towards the visual depth that’s expressed when photographs depict the impossible where the possible was once questioned. By placing an extreme figure in mundane circumstances, an interesting and combative-like dynamic emerges. I wondered how this relationship could be shown in the conditions the world is in as of 2020-2021. I was looking to create an ‘elephant in the room’ effect with little resources and a mask mandate in place.

I thought of the idea of a clown, an extreme figure rare to our post-industrial society, living its daily and normal life as a human being; experiencing the same dull, earthly reality as anyone else. I wanted to place this character where we as humans are seen every day; such as reading the morning paper while having some breakfast, dropping off clothes at the laundromat, going to the beach, and gassing up a vehicle.

Through this odd infiltration of the bizarre in the normal, I hope to convey a greater message about life and the routine so many of us fall into. How even a clown, the most comedic and joyful figure there is, can too experience the mundane and robotic standard of the “human experience”,