What Is Modern Still Life Photography?
By Jagannath Roy
Now, modern still life photography is one of the most ingenious forms of art with which an artist can express his/her thought, imagination, and aesthetic sensibility more strikingly than any other photographic exhibition. Through modern still-life photography, a photographer can depict his/her creativity most powerfully and expressively.
The art of modern still life photography gets its current shape with the progress of technology. Still-life photography has gone through many developments from the invention right from the portable Camera Obscura (dark chamber) to the digital camera.
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF STILL-LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY
The term still life originated from the Dutch word Stilleven. Still means motionless or silent and leven means life. Still-life photography is the most important genre of photography with which the inanimate subject matter, usually commonplace objects — either natural or man-made are represented lively and meaningfully. In other words, still life is also known by its French name nature morte which meant literally a dead nature as it often depicted the lifeless objects from nature and everyday human life like pots, vases, consumer products, handicrafts, plants, fruits, vegetables, foods, rocks, shells, and so on.
Egyptian, Greek, and Roman still life paintings have a great impact on modern still life photography. The ancient Egyptians used to paint in temples or tombs. They wanted to display their offerings for their gods with those paintings. In the 15th century BC, the ancient Egyptian still-life paintings got to prominence. The paintings of foods — crops, fish, and meat also have been found in ancient burial sites. An ancient and notable Egyptian still-life was discovered in the Tomb of Menna, intertwined with the details of their routine life.
Ancient Greeks and Romans also created similar depictions of inanimate objects for mosaics on the floor and painting on the walls especially at Pompeii, the Roman town, covered with ash in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79AD.
Created object photography (tabletop photography, product photography, food photography, etc.), and found object photography (trees, rocks, caught fish, seashells, fruits, etc.) are prime examples of still-life photography.
Modern still-life photography and its subject matter are though quite far from conventional approaches right now. It is modern both in subject matter and technology.
Modern still-life photography got its inspiration mainly from the noteworthy still-life paintings of Greek, Roman and Egyptian painters.
The genre of still-life photography was adopted earlier from the painters. The painters like Vincent Van Gogh, Francisco Goya and Paul Cezanne inspired the photographers of the day. The art of still-life photography gained its popularity in the early 19th century.
Vanitas painting is also an inspiring source of modern still life photography. The idea of vanitas painting greatly influenced the still life photographers and their works.
Vanitas still-life was an art of painting that symbolized the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death. It was actually a medieval funerary art that turned out as a common genre of the painting of the 16th and 17th centuries in Low Lands (the coastal regions of northwestern Europe).
The objects along with valuable things used in vanitas painting are human skulls, rotten fruits, burning candles, smokes, bubbles, watch and, hourglass, musical instruments, and cutting flower sticks which symbolize the ephemerality of our life and the futility of wealth and pleasure.
‘‘ Vanity of vanities — all is vanity ’’ — the idea was that people love the pleasures that make them feel important and wealthy and yet all means nothing(vanity)because time soon passes and we die.
SOME WELL-KNOWN FIGURES OF STILL-LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY AND THEIR WORKS
Roger Fenton
(March 1819–8 August 1869)
Roger Fenton, a British photographer, came from a Lancashire merchant family. He was famous for his still-life photography of domes of churches (Kremlin , Moscow).
Charles Sheeler
(16 July 1883–7 May 1965)
Charles Sheeler, an American painter and photographer, popularly known as one of the founders of American modernism. He developed a “quasi-photographic” style of painting. He is also known as Precisionism and became one of the master photographers of the 20th century.
Josef Sudek
(17 March 1896–15 September 1976)
Josef Sudek, a Czech photographer was known best for his photograph of Prague at Night in 1974.
Sharon Core
Born in 1965 (age 55 years)
Sharon Core is an American photographer. He works on art-historical conventions of landscape, portraiture, and still life to examine questions of collective memory and the interplay between photographic truth and illusion.
Robert Mapplethorpe
(4 November 1946–9 March 1989)
Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer. He was known best for his black-and-white photography.
Kevin John Best
(27 January 1932–31 July 2012)
Kevin John Best came from New South Wales. He exhibited his skills in art at a young age.
Robyn Stacey
(Born in 1952)
She was born in Brisbane. She completed a photography course as a part of an arts degree at Queensland University. After that, she decided that photography in some form would be her career.
Jimmy Hoffman
The Netherlands-born photographer Jimmy Hoffman, now residing in Spain, has turned his fascination for nature into his art and his business. He has published articles on Practical Photography in many reputed international magazines. The Fight is Hoffman’s best-known still life photograph.
Wim Scuurmans
Wim Scuurmans is also a Netherlands born photographer who marks a great signature in modern still-life photography.
Antonio Diaz
Antonio Diaz is a well-known Mexican photographer. Candle Light and The Weight of the Sin are his excellent still-life photographs.
IMPORTANCE OF MODERN STILL-LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY
People use still life photography to capture stills of our daily life from the breakfast table to arts and crafts.
Now, modern still life photography is very essential to keep visual records through the years and decades, even centuries. These apparently dull images will tell future generations about the everyday life we have now.
We live in a digital age. Everybody has smartphones with an incredible camera and most of the persons have affordable DSLRs.We can pick up a camera and capture the life in stills instantly we need.
Therefore, the importance of modern still life photography is growing faraway day by day. Who can say that our single snapshot may not have a place in history?
