Album cover
Album cover
Album cover
Emily Lee
Still Life
Still life is an image that depicts inanimate objects, documenting their form, colour, texture, and composition. There are numerous variations of this style, all depending on the specific artistic intentions of the creator.
What is considered to be the first still life painting is accredited to an Italian painter by the name of Jacopo de'Barbari (Dead bird - 1504), however the ‘golden age’ of still life paintings did not occur until around the 17th century, with the genre itself only emerging during the Renaissance. Early Netherlandish paintings were symbolic items such as skulls, candles, fruits, and hourglasses, all leaning towards a generalised theme of mortality and the fragility of existence. These images were known as vanitas - a genre of still life.
From the 18th century the centre of still life painting shifted over to France, with painters such as Henri Matisse, Gustave Courbet, and Claude Monet exploring the genre.
Nowadays the concept of still life has branched into the art of photography, with more modern artists such as Edward Weston, Karl Blossfeldt, and William Notman experimenting with the forms and shapes of everyday objects.
Edward Weston
“Pepper no.30” by Edward Weston - 1930
Enrico Becker and Matt Harris
Caravaggio
.jpg)
“Basket of fruit” by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - 1599
“GMF fruits” by Enrico Becker and Matt Harris - 2015
In the early 1920s, Weston began photographing nude models. He was intrigued by the form and curves of the human body, an interest which can be seen throughout the rest of Weston’s work - particularly in his still lives.
This image is perhaps Weston’s most famous. At a first glance, the image appears to be of two lovers embracing, yet upon closer inspection we realised that the natural curves that we readily assumed to be of nude models belong in fact to a twisted pepper.
After taking an initial series of still life images in the late 1920s, Weston decided to focus a series solely on peppers. Taking a total of 26 images of peppers against burlap or muslin backdrops in 1929, Weston later spent a four day period (August 2-6, 1930) photographing approximately 30 peppers with burlap or white cardboard backdrops. However Weston was not satisfied by the stark contrast between the peppers and their respective backgrounds. After finding a large tin funnel, Weston photographed a pepper in the open end and was entranced by the results. He remarked that the funnel provided the ‘‘perfect relief for the pepper”, “reflecting light to important contours”.
The German photographer Enrico Becker alongside his friend Matt Harris produced a series of surreal still life images called ‘GMF fruits’. These images feature a variety of different fruits, each painted bright colours on the outside, leaving the insides as normal so that when cut open, there exists a juxtaposition between reality and fantasy. These modified fruits all sit against a bold coloured backdrop, allowing for further colour contrast to be made. The bright colours induce a sense of joy, yet there exists an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction in the presentation of such a natural everyday item in such an unnatural format.
The plain texture of the green allows the viewers’ eyes to be drawn to the textured centre of the image, hence emphasising the modifications to the fruit and therefore intensifying the discontent. There also exists a colour harmony between the analogous red and green, again drawing the viewers’ eye and furthering the innate displeasure of seeing this fruit in such a way that is far beyond what we have chosen to accept as admissible. It is hence that Becker and Harris challenge the possibilities of genetically modified food and pose questions as to whether we would still choose to eat these foods.
This painting by the Italian baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio portrays a wicker basket of summer fruits perched on a ledge. The fruits residing within the basket are all slightly amiss, with rotten parts and worm holes which are symbolic of the transient nature of beauty and show the unstoppable force of natural decay. Furthermore along this line, the precarious placement of the basket upon the ledge creates a sense of dynamacy and suspense in the image, with the knowledge that this basket may fall at any point. This is said to be representative of mortality, exploring the impermanence of life and how it can, at any point, be swiftly ended.
My idea
I produced an initial mind map of my ideas in order to explore different links to my theme, including references to a number of artists correlating to the different concepts.
My theme of impossibility easily encompasses this genre, due to its underlying themes and the paths taken by surrealist artists - such as Salvador Dalí - at tangents from it. I plan to look into the classic orientation of a still life composition, including the main features of vanitas images. However in order to link my work more strongly to my theme, I plan to use symbolism and inaccuracies within my image. More specifically, I intend to juxtapose symbols of life and death, with the overarching pressure of time. However my photograph will differ from standard still life images despite appearing ordinary at a first glance as I will alter each component just slightly to make the composition seem impossible overall.
In this diagram I have drawn out the composition I envision for this piece of work, alongside a number of arrows indicating the direction and type of light I had in mind for each part of the image. I plan to place the key light on the left so that the emphasis is on the hourglass and the glass of water and the skull falls into a slight shadow. However I have added a fill light on the right so that the skull is still discernible from the shadows. Placing a beauty dish above the composition with an extremely soft illumination will allow me to provide extra definition of the subjects, helping to isolate them from the background. Lastly, I intend to shine a strong, minute light source into the base of the glass of water in an attempt to achieve a refraction of light, hopefully allowing some form of rainbow to splay across the surface of the skull, juxtaposing what it represents. However, I may have to use a glass more cut base to produce an effective refraction.
Irving Penn
Penn’s ‘Cranium architecture’ series creates an absorbing study of the structure of the skull. Coming under the heading of vanitas images through the inclusion of a token of death, these images serve to remind us of our mortality and the fate that awaits us all. However, Penn’s titling of the series suggests a certain beauty to the morbidity of the subject matter. Penn described the skull as "an exquisite edifice of living machine. Hard chambers of bone to guard soft organs, protected conduits and channels". I agree with Penn’s fascination as the structure of the cranium is one to behold, protecting our very existence - the brain. It is only in death that we are truly able to explore and understand the incredible construction of life and hence through his images, perhaps Penn implies that there is a level of elegance in death.
In a similar way in my own image I intend to juxtapose symbols of life and death in order to show the majesty of each. By shining a bright light onto the glass of water I hope that a specular refraction will be produced, the lights dancing on the surface of the skull to further the intricate link between life and death.
“Cranium architecture” by Irving Penn - 1986
Harold Ross
“Chalice with pears” by Harold Ross - 2019
Despite not photographing subjects in the range of what I intend for my image, I decided to take inspiration from the work of Harold Ross in his still life photography due to his incredible lighting techniques. The way he lights his subjects is on such a level that it makes them appear as if they were painted. The lighting is incredibly soft, allowing for each of the subjects to show an impeccably shallow gradient of light fall off, producing an almost hyperrealistic effect. The main source of this soft light comes down from the top right hand corner, spilling onto the top of the subjects and producing small highlighted areas on the right sides of the subjects. Again the immense diffusion of this light causes it to become exceptionally soft, hence creating an absence of sharp lined shadows that add to the surreal atmosphere that juxtaposes the normality of the subjects photographed.
I hope to recreate Ross’s style of lighting through the use of a large light modifier to diffuse the light and make it as soft as possible in order to achieve the hyperrealism that is synonymous with his work. I feel that the surreal atmosphere will juxtapose the gritty reality of the subject matter and produce an appealing contrast in the image. Additionally, I hope that the extreme soft lighting will be aesthetically pleasing in my image, thus drawing the viewers eye to the subjects and hence allowing them the time to realise the inaccuracies within the scene and thus begin to question the meanings of the symbolism present.
Response
Beginning my shoot with a single softbox on the left, I developed my lighting to include a second softbox above the subjects to produce a soft ambient lighting and help to eliminate shadows, and a torch to highlight the glassware without further illuminating the already brightened skull. I also used a large black backdrop behind me in order to block out as much of the daylight as possible so that the scene was lit entirely by lighting under my control. This additionally provided a clean area to minimise the reflections evident within the glass of water that would have otherwise have detracted from the image. On the right, I added a sheet of black card in an attempt to darken the right hand side and contrast the symbols of life and death by having the light shine brightly on the water and allow the skull to fall into the shadows.
Initially placing my subjects on a reflective surface, I decided that this composition was more suited to a matte surface, as in the old master’s vanities paintings. Completing my initial images of the tilted water by placing the glass on a slanted surface, I experimented with the light output of my flashes, building up from 1/128 to 1/32 in my later images. Camera wise, I used a shutter speed of 1/200 to remain synched with the strobes, but prevent any motion blur in my image. I used an aperture of F8 to allow my entire composition to be in focus in my image, in the same style as the Flemish old masters. I then adjusted my image to overpower the ambient lighting with an ISO of 200, allowing me to completely control the lighting of the image. Using my camera held in my hand rather than on a tripod possibly made the latter stages of the creation of the image slightly more complex, however it allowed me the freedom to easily recompose the shot and adjust may angle to achieve a base image that I was happy with.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the image I was intending to create, it would be impossible to simply set up the shot and take it. Wishing to include a sand timer going backwards and water tilted sideways in the glass within the composition was incredibly ambitious and hence I had to take images of the entire scene, and then the tilted water on its own in order to produce a composite image via the use of layer masks.
I initially took the image of the scene into photoshop and overlayed the image of the tilted water. Using a layer mask, I painted out the rest of the overlayed image so that only the tilted glass of water remained in place of the original glass. Unfortunately the overlap of the skull and the glass in the original image meant that there was a slight refraction present. This refraction was lost under the new glass, however I changed the opacity of my brush in order to allow a small amount of the skull to be visible behind the glass, though the extent to which I could show the refraction was limited by the water level of the glass underneath as I did not want to uncover it to the extent that the original water level was visible.
I next made a copy of the sand timer, flipping it horizontally and vertically to line up where the bar crossed the glass and to produce the upside down effect. Lining this up over the original sand timer, I again made use of a layer mask in order to paint out the extras around the edges of the copied section, leaving only the glass and sand within. The difficulty I had here was the angle of the sand timer, meaning that the reflections were different in the top and base as a result of the slightly different shades of the table and backdrop. However I feel that this does not detract greatly from the image, showing a colour counterchange which in fact draws the eye to the timer, allowing the viewer to take note of the reversed gravity.
After this, I used the burn tool to darken the skull as the whiteness of it had reflected far too much light into the camera, hence making it too bright in the image. The burn tool allowed me to produce a more graduated light fall off from the skull, causing it to blend into the shadows on the right hand side. This darkness provides a further connotation of death, juxtaposing the light of life.
Lastly, I used spot healing to remove any small pieces of dust and debris from the image to make it a cleaner composition and thus more aesthetically pleasing to view.
I attempted to produce an image in the style of Harold Ross by dropping the clarity right down and adding a considerable volume of luminance to produce a smooth composition. This adjustment produces the impression of a painting.
I also created an edit within which I did the opposite, boosting the clarity and removing the luminance in order to show a gritty ‘realness’ in the image, making it more stark and striking.
For my final image, I chose to use increased clarity for a gritty authenticity to draw the viewers’ eye to the composition. The high clarity and highlighting draws the viewer's’ attention initially to the eye socket of the skull, acting as a reminder of the impermanence of life and the extent of our mortality. This hook then forces the viewer to linger on the image, exploring the rest of what appears to be a standard vanities scene when in fact there are several distortions. The eye is next drawn to the illuminated glass with a slanted water level. This - as a symbol of life - leads the viewer to question the validity and outlook they have on their own life. Lastly, we come to the sand timer. The cage is symbolic of the way we try to trap and control time, yet the inversion of the sand within the glass holds the implication that despite time being a construct of humanity, its passage is far from our control. The intention of this image was to force the viewer to realise the fickle possibility of normality and through the use of deceptive edits to show the futility of any attempt to fix and control the passage of time and your own life. The end result is always morbid due to our mortality - a view which I attempted to convey through the lack of colour and cold cast in the image.
To conclude, I feel that my image is a capable vanitas, acting as reminder of the ephemeral nature of life and causing the viewer to re-evaluate their choices in order to make the most of what we have.