Years ago, I published a photoblog. Remember those? The premise was simple: a photo a day with some links to see more of that artist’s work. Instagram changed everything, so I’m trying something new: the Monday Muse, a visual inspiration for your email inbox. No algorithms, no ads. Just a picture to start your week. Would you like to show something of yours here? Please email anytime! —AA

Sometimes it’s all about slowing down and looking closely.

I started reading Richard Quinney’s For the Time Being: Ethnography of Everyday Life on Sunday, and he caught my eye with a handful of sentences about attention, which many of you know is a hobbyhorse of mine. Richard writes:

We work, we play, we sleep, we love, we walk the streets from place to place — such an ordinary existence. But if we let the ordinary escape our attention and our care, we miss life itself. Much, in other words, depends on the mundane. Any sense of the extraordinary is grounded first of all in ordinary experience. With imagination, the mundane and the sublime are one…The meaning of our existence is in the details of being alive. For the time being is everything.

Doesn’t that about sum it up?

And what could be more mundane, more ordinary than a simple garden snail? Quinney’s insight was timely, because the other day I asked Bobby Beasley if we could show this image of his in the Monday Muse. I don’t know about you, but I find snails delightful and, to be honest, magical. Kristen and I read Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s illness memoir, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, last fall, which might have had something to do with Bobby’s image catching my eye. I asked Bobby what inspired him to make the picture, and he replied:

There is a cooking apple tree at the end of my mum and dad’s garden that grows the most gigantic fruit.

Throughout August, the fruits seem to double in size!

I’ll call past most weeks for a cuppa and if it’s sunny, a nosy round the garden.

Me and my dad will always see how the apples are coming along and earmark ones that look to be monsters in the making.

That week, I was eye-to-eye with a snail, probably doing the same thing.

It’s nice when things connect like this. Something I love about photography is how it helps us to see. I’ve learned to appreciate the quotidian details of the real world by photographing them, and I know many of you can relate. Richard’s essay and Bobby’s image spoke to me today, and I hope they resonate with you. Sometimes it’s good to notice what you notice, especially if it’s something ordinary like a garden snail.

I’m a big fan of Bobby’s work, and I hope you’ll check him out. You can explore his website and follow him on Instagram. He’s got a brilliant eye for color, and his pictures are tons of fun. Take a look when you have time this week. Cheers!

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