Photographing the ordinary in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1986
In the autumn of 1986, I spent several weeks in Nacogdoches, a small college town in East Texas. Outside the university, I walked a lot with my Nikon cameras, simply looking for things to photograph. The problem was that there was nothing spectacular about Nacogdoches.
I already knew the town, having spent several months there the previous year. In 1986, I returned to Stephen F. Austin State University and met up again with the students and teachers I had known there.
At the time, Nacogdoches had a population of around 27,000, nearly half of them students. It is known as the oldest town in Texas, although that does not mean there is a succession of monuments or spectacular places to photograph.
What do you photograph when there is nothing spectacular?
Outside the university, I walked through the streets with my cameras. I looked at shops, roads, garages, railroad tracks, signs, gas stations, a telephone booth or the drive-through of a bank.
Photographing the ordinary - Mize Department Store - Nacogdoches, Texas, 1986 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
I was mainly trying to make pictures with whatever I found around me.
Photographing the ordinary - Waiting in the Ford Mustang - Nacogdoches, Texas, 1986 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
Some subjects caught my attention and I tried a composition. I would sometimes pass the same place again later and try once more. The photographs in this series that look quite similar were therefore not always taken just a few seconds apart.
Photographing the ordinary - Bank drive-through - Nacogdoches, Texas, 1986 - Photo: © Sebastien Desnoulez
The bank drive-through is one example. I returned there several times, at different moments, trying to improve the composition or make use of a more interesting situation.
This repetition was part of the learning process. A first photograph did not necessarily work as I had hoped. I would look at the negative, keep the place in mind and try again when the opportunity arose.
Learning to look
At twenty, much of the way I learned photography came through this kind of trial and error. With an ordinary subject, I had to look for the composition, the light, the distance or the right moment that could turn it into an interesting photograph.
At the time, my photographic culture came mainly from magazines and books. I looked at a great deal of photography and was particularly interested in the Photo Poche collection, which presented, in a small volume, a selection of work spanning an entire photographer's career: Eugène Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Weegee, Brassaï and many others.
This way of discovering photography probably influenced the way I worked. What I saw were essentially selected images, the photographs their authors or editors had chosen to keep and show.
That was also what I was trying to produce.
My aim was to make photographs strong enough to be selected or included in a portfolio. Images that, looking back, I might describe today as "bankable". I did not feel the need to systematically record everything surrounding the subject.
What I did not photograph
Forty years later, looking at these negatives, I also notice what is missing.
For example, I sometimes regret not having photographed more of the ordinary cars driving around Nacogdoches. In 1986, they did not interest me very much. I would much rather have come across American cars from the 1950s or 1960s.
Today, those very ordinary cars from the 1980s are exactly what I would like to find more often in my photographs.
The same applies to many aspects of everyday life. Behind-the-scenes moments, the people I spent time with, and whatever happened to be beside or behind me often remained outside the frame. I preferred to retain the memory of a situation through the photographs I had chosen to make.
The technical context was also very different from today. With film, taking large numbers of photographs cost money, and working as the light faded quickly involved compromises. High-speed or pushed films made it possible to keep shooting, although often with a significant deterioration in grain and overall image quality.
That also encouraged selectivity.
Negatives rediscovered forty years later
I had never made prints from most of these black-and-white negatives. They remained in my archives until I scanned them during the summer of 2026.
I do not rediscover them today as exceptional photographs. Their interest lies elsewhere. They show what I was looking for at twenty when there was no spectacular landscape, famous monument or particular event in front of me.
A street, a gas station, a shop, a railroad track or a bank drive-through could become a subject, provided I could work out how to photograph it.
With forty years of hindsight, I might wish that I had photographed more of what surrounded me. I could have done so. It simply was not my conception of photography.
Even then, I was more interested in producing an image than in compiling an inventory.
About the author
Sebastien Desnoulez is a photographer, author and image maker based in Paris. His work spans architectural photography, landscape photography and travel photography, with particular attention to composition, lines, light, blur and visual accidents. Trained in photography in the mid-1980s, he covered Formula 1 and reported from around the world before developing a fine art photography practice built around the tension between graphic rigour and visual instability. He also shares his technical experience through practical articles for passionate photographers, drawing on a strong visual culture acquired in both film and digital photography.
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