After I made the yellow garage photo I made a few more in-kind pieces and was relatively happy with them. But during that same period I was teaching a unit on still life at JCC. Still life was never a great allure, I never gravitated towards the genre, but for a photographer it’s a must-know. The thing is- I had a lot of fun teaching the unit and after we moved on, I began making some still life setups at home. My “studio” for my experiments was the desk I built a decade ago out of reclaimed pallet wood. The desk is perfect for still life- its texture and tone anchor anything that sits on it. I painted a large sheet of foamcore board grey, and it became the neutral backdrop that would host any background texture or color I wanted to add later in processing. I started with simple approaches, fruit always works as a subject, and wooden or ceramic bowls and dishes. And what came out of these experiments was some decent images and a feeling of absolute joy. So, I set aside my other pursuits and focused on solely on this.
It’s been a little over a year now- maybe fifteen months, that I’ve been only making still life images. Their nature and focus have evolved over time but I’m still finding new ways to make each one unique. I happened across an article published by the Tate Gallery on the nature of still life and the writer mentions two predominate throughlines for the genre- Memento Mori and Vanitas.
Memento Mori translates loosely as a reminder that all things die, and vanitas as “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are (vanity), a chasing after the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 1:14) Basically- nothing lasts forever. In my feverish brain what the Tate was saying to me was- “Apply the concept of time and change to your still life work”
Looking at still life not as a thing but as a moment- it was a parting of the heavens. As a photographic approach every still life is a series, with changes in posing and alterations of lighting setups and camera angles. By creating a compounding of the event, I was compiling all my thoughts and time in the studio into this single image. And for the second time in two years’ time, I felt my photographs meant something.
To date I’ve completed roughly a dozen finished transfer prints. And you know what? They’re good. I’m confident in that statement. The gel transfer process makes a unique original, and I only make a single print, save for an occasional artist proof if I’m unhappy with the first result. Also, by transferring the image to the Arches watercolor paper, it takes on the texture of the paper and picks up a soft glow from the overglaze. All in all, it’s pretty cool. And it gives me, oddly, hope.
So here I am, a semi-retired “emerging artist”. It’s a phrase I don’t take lightly, and one I want to delve deeper into next week…