ABSTRACT
Most diarists focus on events that stand out in their minds from the basic routine of their everyday lives; but a few, like the eighteenth-century village shopkeeper, Thomas Turner (Vaisey 1984), dwell on the detail of that routine itself. For social scientists and historians this latter type of diary is important, because everyday routine is, by definition, what much of our lives consist of – and it tends to get forgotten. My diary aims to be of this type. But the still visual diary, unlike video and written diaries, does not present a flow of events over time. Instead, it consists of a sequence of (possibly captioned) frozen moments, each of which becomes exceptional by the very fact of being singled out. So, in the short term, a photographic diary may record a series of ‘heightened’ ordinary moments. But viewed over a longer period – say, a year – some of those heightened moments may begin to recur regularly, though in a slightly changed form; and patterns of continuity – and even routine – may become apparent.
