Repetition. Our life is plagued with repetition. From the moment we wake up to the moment we return to bed, we spend our days repeating most of the tasks that we had done the day before. We talk to the same people, see the same place, think the same thoughts and return, somewhat exhausted, to the same place we so familiarly know. Even what we see, wether on our computer screen or our widescreen tv's seem to repeat itself. The same news, the same shows, the same distractions from repetition.
And it's mostly by choice. Because we do not like change; it makes us uncomfortable , uneasy, if not stressed. We avoid anything that is unfamiliar because we profoundly dislike being unrooted from our habits. Except for photography.
If photography does not disturb us from our repetition, it has failed. If it doesn't suddenly and brutally pushes us out from our comfort zone, than it is not great photography. It is just another habit, an illustration. Photography seeks to constantly provoke us into not only rethinking the world around us, but also reinterpreting the common. Not just by seeking out of the ordinary subjects but if still compelled to do so, in finding new angles, new points of view, tearing apart the very fabric of the ordinary, the repetitive.
In a great photograph, there is no room for the routine. Neither in the perception of the photographer, nor in the eyes of the viewer. It is just never the same. It is rather the festival of the unexpected and challenging. A reminder that life, after all, is never in the mundane. And for those who wondered, the Little Prince is alive and well, playing with model airplanes in the sands of Arabia.

Paul Melcher