The unordinary in the ordinary

Not long after moving to the Netherlands, photographer Sonia Truman found herself sitting in a small Slavic restaurant with friends who had come to visit her. When the food arrived at the table, something unexpected happened. Looking at the plate in front of her, she suddenly felt a distant memory from childhood surface — a quiet but unmistakable feeling of recognition.

Without thinking much about it, she took out her iPhone and captured the moment.

Sonia currently lives in Amsterdam, though she prefers to think of herself as simply being based in Europe for now — and hopefully in many other places around the world in the future.

After that moment she started noticing similar fragments of memory in everyday life. Small things — plates, dishes, objects in the kitchen — began to remind her of moments from the past. Perhaps, she laughs, also because washing dishes was something she absolutely hated as a child.

What interests her most is the way ordinary objects can suddenly carry meaning.

“Even the most ordinary object can become something special,” she explains. “We can give it a kind of soul, something that suddenly reminds us of a feeling or a memory.”

For Sonia, learning to notice these moments has become something like a personal exercise in attention.

“I think it’s a skill that I really want to grow inside of me — to start to see the unordinary in the ordinary.”

Many of the images appear in black and white, a choice that creates a quieter and more atmospheric space for the objects themselves. Without colour, the viewer can focus more closely on shape, light and texture.

The photographs themselves are simple and often taken spontaneously during everyday moments. Yet through careful observation, ordinary objects begin to take on an almost sculptural presence.

Looking back, Sonia realised that these images were also connected to something deeper: the experience of moving through life, leaving places behind and building new ones.

“You’re always bringing something with you,” she says.

For her, these photographs became a quiet way of reconnecting with childhood memories while adjusting to life in a new country. And perhaps, she hopes, they might encourage others to pause for a moment and look differently at the small objects around them — and maybe recognise something of their own story within them.