The Brief

As you’ve seen, there are many examples of photography that avoid the use of the human figure in order to communicate truths and stories about humanity. Do your own​ ​research into areas you’ve been inspired by in this project; delve deeper into the areas that interest you. Continue to think about how this might inform your own practice.

Introduction

Within the second half of Project 1, we are introduced to the genre of still life. During the previous units, my research has led me to look a the practice of traditional painters, most of whom worked in still life at some point in their career. Famous painters such as Cezanne, Van Es and Gaugin painted still life with one thing specifically in common, their paintings had a quality of ‘the ordinary’ paired with the trace of someone having been present to influence the scene before it was painted. In some cases, such as the one below, the image could represent a moment for pause with an activity about to proceed when the person has returned.

In this classical scene, we see what looks like a dining table with a part-consumed meal on it. The image could be read a number of ways, the first being a document of the structures of natural and ‘made’ food; the cross-sectioned pie and grapefruit. The second reading could be that this meal has had to be halted for some reason while the person leaves the room momentarily. With the former reading, we can also see the use of light and shadow in the composition, which is subtle enough to draw our attention first to the fruit and then to the bread and pie. The second reading uses the light to create a sense of evening with its muted tones. Whatever the reading, there is both technical revelation and the pausing of human life contained within what looks like a banal scene.

Sam Taylor-Wood (1967 -)

With her short film Still Life (2001), Sam Taylor-Wood takes a classic scene of some fruit as painted by one of the master painters and films a time-lapse of it decaying from fresh to pulp. The resulting film reveals a number of ideas that we might not consider until presented with what is a long-term activity, in real-time. The first is the passing of time itself. As the film advances, the light in the scene changes subtly which literally describes the passing of time for the fruit. The second, more obvious one is the actual decaying of the fruit which gradually develops discolouration as the flesh rots. During this process, the emergence of fungus becomes obvious which feeds on the decaying fruit. The film concludes with the ‘death’ of the fungus also and the appearance of flies that feed on what remains. The film is powerful because it suggests a documentary of something happening as with Claesz’ picture but also a continuation of life in the scene. The fruit decays, leading to new life in the fungus with that too dying eventually. After a time what is left further attracts other life to consume it. The element that isn’t included but is also palpable, is the sense of neglect on the part of the owner. Someone has left this here to rot for a long time, which begs the question ‘why?’ That in turn provokes different reactions depending on how we see waste or laziness and in itself could be a metaphor for the human condition and its behaviour toward the neglect of the natural world.

When I first saw the film, I was reminded of Michael Wesley’s Still Lives (2003) which depicts vases of flowers decaying over time.

The images were made using very long exposures on film which result in the movement of the flowers as they decay being visible in the single frame. Again, this series has the metaphorical sense of abandonment and carelessness. The flowers have been cut from their natural habitat, used in a display for a person who then promptly lets them decay. The person isn’t present but their actions most definitely are.

Jeff Wall (1946 -) and Laura Letinsky (1962 -)

With these two artists, the idea of still life is taken a step further with the images tending to be created more for their aesthetic than any iconic or symbolic messages. Special attention is paid to elevating the banality of the objects in their photographs by careful composition of form, tone and colour so that the viewer is left with the immediate impact of a visual before trying to understand the meaning of the image. The aesthetic is, as the notes suggest, pushing the viewer to try to appreciate the visual rather than the subject specifically, i.e. to ask whether it is ‘art’ or not.

In the photograph above, Wall uses diagonal ‘lines’ in the frame and in the subjects to create a geometric composition. Everything from the lines of the wall and cupboard, to the arrangement of the wheels on the bucket point to order, while the floor and cupboard have contrasting rough textures and dirty appearances to them. The final layer is the tone and colour, which work together in the subjects and their backgrounds. Wall is making something with atheistic ‘appeal’ that also has the foundations of still life with traces of human contact. Something has been removed from the floor which has left the bare patches. The mop looks like it has been left there temporarily rather than being put away in the cupboard. The work asks questions about behaviour but also about the coincidence that the objects appear in balance. We suspect it’s deliberate but we cannot be sure.

With Laura Letinsky’s work, we see a similar approach to making the still life ‘look’ like the works of the classic painters. Her work takes the banal subjects that we have seen with other artists and places them in a stylised environment, dominated by pastel shades and soft tones. In an interview for Aperture[3], Letinsky speaks of her initial interest as being the characterisations of the subjects (mainly fruit in her case) as being somehow unimportant; their appearance having strong lines to femininity (the way she lights her still life accentuates this idea). Finallly, there is the layer of domesticity that we’ve seen before; food preparation that is paused midway through as if life has somehow gotten in the way. Letinsky went on to discuss the duality of photographic representation, which I found interesting.

“Alongside its ability to provoke sensations, photography has a way of homogenizing experience. A piece of schmutz and a Tiffany diamond become the same thing once they’re photographed—they become photographs. I have a love/hate relationship with this power of the camera to flatten difference”

Laura Letinsky

What she is saying here is that photographs simultaneously provoke emotional reactions in the viewe while the camera doesn’t naturally emphasise the beautiful over the bland in a single image. If we consider this in the context of how we look at things around us, the concepts of beauty and ugliness (or blandness) are created by our personalities. The image then invokes a subconscious response (emotional or post-memory) while the visual is something we can decide to consider as beauty or not. As the notes point out, Letinsky’s later work includes representations of still life subjects instead of the actual object, which for me is taking a strong influence from Magritte and his assertion that a representation is not ‘the object’; this is not a pipe.

Nigel Shafran (1964 -) and Sarah Lynch

We encountered Nigel Shafran’s work Washing Up(2000) during Context and Narrative[4] and I was drawn to his use of ‘post-event’ contextual elements in his pictures. At the time, we were considering the work as absenteeism portraiture because the items in the compositions told us a story about the people who lived in the environment. The subtle and careful placement of the pots and pans, empty wine bottles etc set the images in a particular time of day as we start to imagine what the preceding meal was like. Some of the items suggest a convivial situation while others a potentially tense one, but that is up the viewer’s own recognition of the scene to conclude. Of the artists in Context and Narrative, Shafran (along with Wall and diCorcia) influenced my view of story-telling more than the others.

Sarah Lynch’s work is unlike the other artists here although the origins are clearly still life. Lynch makes a small number of objects the focus of her photographs, with little in terms of background or additional contextual elements. Her subjects are typically everyday and instantly recognisable to most people, but here they are represented in the composition in a way that makes the viewer consider them carefully. In one (Circles No.5)[5], a single circle of electrical wire sits in an empty space. The circle is perpendicular to the viewer, so that the shape is clearly seen. The wire is looped a few times and secured by a small thread that is the same colour as the plain background. The image is lit so that the bold copper colour of the wire contrasts with the otherwise pastel background, resulting in the viewer only looking at the one subject. At first glance, it’s not clear why this picture deserves any real attention. When I looked at it, I was struck by how the wire appears under tension, restrained by the thin thread that barely looks strong enough to hold it. I’m immediately struck by what would happen if the thread snapped. Would the wire spring out and lose its shape? Would that movement topple the wire so that the circle it envelopes also collapses? Is the wire a metaphor for the fragility of life?

“I would like to think that my work does show importance and beauty in everything, be it objects, space or time.  I hope it is a reminder for us to appreciate life so as not waste our short time being angry or hurtful. I think being reminded of our fragile states, both in the sense of our own mortality and the transient nature of our being, helps put our small selves into perspective. We should be marvelling at the constant movement of energy that we are part of; we shouldn’t be trying to divide, package and control it all”

Sarah Lynch in conversation with Sharon Boothroyd[6]

This quotation from her interview with Sharon Boothroyd suggests that my reaction is similar to her intent for the work. Here then, we have traces of human interaction because the wire was put into a circle deliberately and restrained by the use of the thread. The human input has a transformative quality to the wire, which now takes a shape it’s not supposed to be in. Having said that, wire is normally formed on a reel, so it could be argued that the act of winding it in this way is a pseudo-natural manipulation in an almost passive-aggressive fashion. The person who did it is no longer there in terms of the picture but their impact is still felt. The wire though, could break free at any moment, either by accident or intentionally. The potential for moving from one state to another is very much a metaphor for life and death. The triviality of the wire and its surroundings is for me a metaphor for our own insignificance in the context of the universe.

Susan Lipper and Penny Klepuszewska

The final two artists in this project play heavily on stereotypes in their still life work. Lipper made a series called Bed and Breakfast (1998) which uses a mixture of still life and candid ‘holiday snap’ photographs to create a sense of the English holiday. What’s interesting is that the stereotype is being interpreted by an American. Even so, she takes the most familiar parts of the British holiday experience that people of that culture instantly recognise. The work exploits the minor, apparently unimportant details of the traditional British holiday in a way that invokes memory. As the notes suggest, the memories that the images provoke are not limited to the visual. Those of a certain age would associate the image of the curtains (below) with an old, slightly musty smell that tell of a room needing some modernisation. That sense works with the visual aspect, which is more obvious in the same way. The tone of the image and the peach-colour of the wall suggest a quaintness that is often associated with small, British hotels and B&Bs. To look further, the cheerful pattern of the curtains themselves belie the mood of the rest of the series which has a tired, clichéd feel to it.

A similar set of emotions are invoked when we look at the work of Penny Klepuszewska. Her series Living Arrangements (2001) uses still life to represent familiar items in a nursing home. The series is shot as ‘low-key’, which adds immediately adds a sense of gentle discovery as if the scene is being illuminated from the darkness by torchlight. The artist uses the small amount of light to pick out the edges of some structures, while placing others in shadow which, when I viewed it, made me feel like I was moving through the ‘scene’, gaining mere glimpses of the items. Like Lipper, Klepuszewska does include people in her scenes but instead of the emphasis being about them, they are almost ‘models’ for the other elements in the frame. In the picture below, for example, Klepuszewska uses the old lady’s hands to model ideas about the lace tablecloth and the glasses.

This image struck me as we have a blending of still-live with portraiture that creates a strong sense of someone’s life without being to see much of them. We don’t know anything beyond the age of the hands and that they look feminine. The arrangement of the hands is as if in prayer which sets this image out from the rest of the series in that it suggests both comfort and loneliness in the same picture. The rest of the series appears almost documentary in nature with the selection of items that a nursing home would have within it. This image reminded me of Bryony Campbell’s Dad Project, studied in Context & Narrative[9]. Campbell included photographs of her Dad’s physical decline without showing his face or any emotions that he may have been experiencing. The final picture in that series, of Campbell holding his hand after his death, was for me the most powerful in terms of a metaphor fro the passing of time and our physical forms acting as a vessel. In the picture above, we have the old hands pausing for prayer at a table, which creates a sense of someone’s faith that they are not alone. The use of light suggests the prayer is before bed, which is a strong, recognisable idea in people who are deeply religious and traditional about their faith. The inclusion of the glasses that have been neatly folded and placed, further emphasises the sense of the day ‘being over’. The who image could be read as a metaphor for old age and impending death, or indeed the gratitude for each day despite the surroundings the person finds themselves in. There is a layer of joy in the image, which fits very neatly into the rest of the series.

Conclusion

I’ve found this project very interesting because of the different ways that absenteeism and still life can be used to tell relatable human stories. Each artist has used the genre slightly differently, from Wall’s discovered beauty in banality to Letinsky’s metaphors for the grace and fragility of the physical. Shafran’s Washing Up always appealed to me as it was the first time I really looked at an image for signs of life. The life is definitely there in the subtle inclusion of everyday objects, but the questions that it raises are so vast that the imagination of the viewer can run wild. The series by Klepuszewska struck me as sensitive and caring, perhaps because I can relate to the messages about the final phases of life. We can see a nursing home as being a terrible idea for our loved ones or we can see them as a safe haven for the elderly to continue with their customs or traditions. Whatever the viewer brings to the viewing influences how the series makes them feel.

In terms of how this work (and the rest of Project 1) will influence my work, I am planning to incorporate some form of still life tableau into my story for Assignment 5. The challenge for me will be not including too much detail that restricts the viewer in understanding the picture itself and how it fits into the rest of the series.

References

[1] Jansa, Date Unknown, “Famous Still Life Paintings By Dutch Artist Pieter Claesz”, Image Resource, Fine Art Blogger, https://fineartblogger.com/famous-still-life-paintings-dutch-artist-pieter-claesz/

[2] Gramovich M, 2015, Time Shows, Ultra-long exposures in the work of Michael Wesley, https://birdinflight.com/inspiration/experience/time-shows-ultra-long-exposure-in-works-of-michael-wesely.html,

[3] Sholis B, 2013, “Interview with Laura Letinsky”, Aperture Magazine, https://aperture.org/editorial/interview-with-laura-letinsky/

[4] Fletcher R, 2020, “3) Exercise 3: Shafran Critique”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/09/04/3-exercise-4-shafran-critique/

[5] Lynch S, 202, “Circles No.5”, Artist Website, https://www.sarahlynchphotography.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=27088&Akey=S3LFXAM4&ajx=1#!pf66333_im4

[6] Boothroyd S, 2012, “Sarah Lynch Interview”, Photoparley Blog, https://photoparley.wordpress.com/category/sarah-lynch/

[7] Lipper S, 1998, “Bed & Breakfast”, Image Resource, Artist Website, https://www.susanlipper.com/bb_08.html

[8] Klepuszewska P, 2001, “Living Arrangements”, Image Resource, Artist Website, https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/london-college-of-communication/sproxton-award-for-photography/penny-klepuszewska

[9] Fletcher R, 2020, “Exercise 2.1: The Dad Project”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/05/29/exercise-2-1-the-dad-project/