Photographer: Sofie Sund

Her subjects in the book range from purely mundane human-made objects — a toothbrush, a glass of water, a pair of socks or sunglasses — to flora and fruits found in everyday life, perhaps in the supermarket, or plucked from the verge of a city street. Each one is treated with reverence, placed on a plush cushion or again the backdrop of a rich piece of fabric and shot with the kind of attention we would more normally associate with a celebrity portrait.

Sund’s skill lies in making us look beyond the familiar and functional to the beauty that lies all around us, if we pause to look properly. “It's easy to miss them if you don't think about it,” she says, “but we have to find happiness and beauty in everyday life”.

For many of us, this is a lesson we need to consciously learn, slowing down in mindful contemplation. Not so for Sund, who finds that beauty seeks her out, even when she’s not deliberately looking for it.

“Sometimes it's just like how the light shines on something or maybe it's even just an idea of something, or a feeling. It's so many different things, but I'm very attracted to pretty things, and especially to colors.”

Colors are, of course, a recurrent theme in her work. So vibrant are they, it is impossible to imagine her images in black and white. “(Color) definitely is one of the bigger inspirations in my pictures,” she agrees. It’s something she appears to comment on, obliquely, in Mellow: paired with many of her still lifes are close up images of her own eye, smeared, dabbed, or in one case, even splashed with color.

Can we assume that this is her perception of color — compelling and impossible to ignore, literally hitting her in the eye?

“Yes, especially with the one with the pink!” she says. (This is the splash of color.) But the eyes have another layer to them as well.

“When I started getting interested in photography, I shot a lot of eye pictures.” Mainly, at that time, because they were very popular. But many years later, she found herself returning to the motif. “I wanted to take you further and create pictures that combined that memory and my love for color… and then — kind of the expression of the eye…

“This is why I do photography! I'm not that good at explaining,” she concludes, wistfully.

But her work speaks for itself, with no need for a written or spoken explanation. Indeed, even that very wistfulness is beautifully represented in her work, in many of which her own shadow is visible: a shadow rather than a reflection in a mirror, or a silhouetted head in profile smelling a flower. It’s a repeated pattern in her images, with an element of sadness to it: the shadows can only ever approach; they can never fully engage.

In one, a shadowed hand reaches for a vibrantly sharp pear, sliced on a green background. The photograph is beautiful but also melancholic; the impossibility of the shadow’s longing for the color and sweet juice of the fruit.

It’s a topic that returns to our earlier discussion of finding joy and beauty in the everyday. Sund is very conscious of the divide between “normal life” and the expectations and curated ways that we often choose to depict ourselves.

“Especially social media,” she says, “it's all about showing the big things you do, expensive big holidays. And not everyone has that.” Instead of reaching wistfully, like a shadow, after that which we cannot have, she encourages you to take your moments in the smaller things.

Fruit and vegetables are a recurrent obsession, and one that appears in many of the images in Mellow. Bell peppers, chili peppers, citrus, pomegranate, and more crop up frequently.

“They are like little sculptures created by nature,” Sund says, in a perfect example of how art can be found in the everyday.

“I hope it is inspirational for people to start finding these things themselves.”

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