McDonald's, Côte Saint-Luc, Montreal c. 1978

This photographic print comes to us from Lynne Cohen and gives us a peek into a McDonald's in Côte Saint-Luc, Montreal. I feel for Lynn here, finding the strange beauty in the most banal of settings. The chairs all lined up, like a little chorus line of cleanliness. Check out the patterns on the wall: on one side a fan of peacock feathers, on the other, a flower motif. Both are strangely hypnotic, aren’t they? They're almost fighting for attention, mirroring the repetitive rows of baby chairs. I wonder what Lynne was thinking when she made this? There’s a feeling of quiet observation, maybe a bit of irony. The greyscale gives it a timeless, almost documentary feel. It reminds me a little of other photographers like Bernd and Hilla Becher, who also looked for the strange beauty of uniformity. It’s all about seeing the world in a new way, finding the extraordinary in the everyday.