Telling a Story

"Photographing a piece of cake can be art"

- Irving Penn-

Happy New Year to you all and may 2022 bring you joy and happiness and lots of photographs.

Still Life... two words I must admit that when I hear them or read them I tend to stay clear of as I associate them with stuffy boring paintings..

How wrong I was...

Recently, I have discovered the delights and fun that one can have with Still Life and the deeper meaning that is being told by the artist through the placement of everyday objects.

This is a whole new departure for me. The idea of setting up a scene, rearranging, trying different backgrounds, lighting and objects was very alien to my mindset, which generally tends to be to photograph abstract pictures or passing moments.

The beauty of still life is to tell a story or idea through objects, hence why so many of the Masters used objects such as flowers or fruit which represented abundance and life and dying objects to equally show death. Still life as we know it can be traced back as far as 15BC to the Toom of Meena and was brought into favour by such artists as Cezanne and Van Gogh. There are many amazing Still Life photographers today such as Irving Penn and Olivia Parker.

The photograph below is from a project titled "Paraphernalia" where I have taken objects used by many when preparing to "go out". The use of the magnified mirror is to show the exaggerated image we have of how we must look.

If you would like to see more of my photographs, please pop along to my Webpage.

Slan

Aisling