London-based street photographer Mark Luke Grant brings together a year of 35mm colour film photography in a first edition of one hundred hardback copies, capturing the small details, odd moments and quiet humour of East London life that reveal themselves only if you slow down.
Extra Ordinary did not come from a plan. Mark Luke Grant spent time on the streets without a fixed agenda, staying present, waiting for the small details and odd moments and quiet humour that surface in familiar places if you give them enough attention.
“Most of it comes from just being out there without an agenda,” he says. “The details, the odd moments, the small things that catch your eye if you’re patient enough. They’re everywhere, but you have to be in the right state of mind to notice them.”
Shot on 35mm colour film over roughly a year, almost entirely in East London with a handful of images from elsewhere in the city, the project was edited for nearly as long as it was shot. Getting 45 photographs to flow from one to another without forcing a narrative took considerable time.
“I wanted the images to be connected, whether by subject or aesthetic, but I didn’t want to impose a story,” Grant says. “Working out what belonged and where to draw the line took a long time to figure out.”
The result is a 68-page hardback with a lay-flat binding, clothbound with a debossed cover image and white block foil on the spine, printed digitally on 150gsm Munken Lynx Smooth Natural White. It is released in a first edition of one hundred copies.
Extra Ordinary is Grant’s first book focused entirely on London street photography, following his previous book Inviting Light. The title sits lightly on the work: not a declaration about the extraordinary hiding in the ordinary, but a quiet observation that these two things are often the same thing, given the right attention.
Mark Luke Grant is a London-based street photographer originally from the South West of England, with roots in traditional darkroom printing. His work explores the poetry and peculiarities of everyday life through film and digital photography.
Website: marklukegrant.co.uk Instagram: @marklukegrant
Extra Ordinary, 2025. 68 pages, 45 colour photographs, 35mm film. Hardback, lay-flat bound, clothbound. 175 × 230mm. 150gsm Munken Lynx Smooth Natural White. First edition of 100. ISBN: 9781036914882.
