Nature Morte and Vanitas influenced Photographers

During our seminar with Jill speaking about Nature Morte and Vanitas, we were also shown still life photographers who had influences of Nature Morte and Vanitas in their work. Each photographer's work still includes the stillness that is shown in still life paintings, and consists of objects that represent and have an important meaning. The work of the following photographers have clearly been influenced by past paintings and still have elements that were important in past art work, when still life was very symbolic to everyday life. Modern photographers have made their still life work more influential to todays society and what is relevant to their own lives and others around them.

Marian Drew
Marian is one of Australia's most powerful and significant contemporary and still life artists of today. Her Still Life project "Australiana" from 2003 to 2009 presents images of dead Australian bush animals, that she had found already dead, placed next to objects that are somehow linked together. Her images from this series were all really interesting to look at because of the animals and how Marian had placed them. It is clear to see how these photographs are influenced by past vanities and nature morte painting because of the style and the way everything is placed. The different element Drew has used that is not the same as other still life vanitas styled photography and paintings, is that she has a background in some of the images from this series that is not white or black, it appears to be another photograph or an actual environment that she has used behind the objects she is photographing. I think this works with these images because of the narrative behind it being about her home country of Australia and the use of animals that are from there.

Lorenzo Vitturi

Lorenzo Vitturi's series of work "Dalston Anatomy" presents a book full of colourful images of people and surroundings of east London's Ridley Road market. He focused on this because it was local and special to him, but also starting to change due to gentrification. It was important to Lorenzo to capture this area before it transformed completely. The photographs from this series are seriously different to anything I personally have seen before. They are so individual in the use of colour and use of objects and people, it really does represent this area of London he is photographing. The still lifes that are included in this series are a mixture of fruit, vegetables and objects from the market and all placed and sculpted in a way that is connected to what Lorenzo is representing. In an interview with magazine Of the Afternoon, Vitturi explains that he arranges these sculptures because he ttys to find anatomical similarities between the objects and the people that he photographs because they show how everything about this market is connected and because the sculptures only last a couple of hours representing how these markets and people he come's across only last for a certain time too.