Photography Visit

Recently I visited an exhibition in London, The exhibition was The Sony World Photography Awards 2013. Here is a link to the website http://www.worldphoto.org/about-the-sony-world-photography-awards/. The exhibition was held in Somerset House in London. During the walk around the exhibition one piece of work really stood out for me in particular and this was the work by Vanessa Colareta. Her work was focused on still life I found the images had such an atmosphere to them and a story to tell. Here is a link to her website http://vanessacolareta.com/. After looking through many of her photos online after the visit I was inspired to experiment with this style of work. Vanessa Colereta won the still life award and I want to show some photos she entered into the competition and why.



 

 Here is some of the photo Vanessa entered after researching her work I found some very interesting background information to her work.

She uses this quote along side her work  "Through the analysis of food in different cultures one can find socially relevant cultural historical evidence" Elisabeth Hartung, "The Art of Eating"
She believes this quote and relates this to her work. The album on her web page called "Migrant" is images taken in Spain and she describes these images.
" Migrant" uses still life to talk about a current event: the migration of women in Spain. This work is inspired by the symbolism of the still life of Spanish Golden Age to photographically represent hybrid social processes such as globalization and migration. 

I found it interesting that she was inspired by the symbolism of still life in the Spanish golden age which was at the time of 1492-1659 and was "a time of extraordinary artistic flowering" They contributed to art, music and literature which is still used and studied today.  Here is an example of still life art work by Francisco De Zurbaran. (1598- 1664) . The paintings of still life is very similar to the photographs of the work by Vanessa but in my opinion still life all does look very similar anyway it has particular rules I think for example objects lined up on a table it seems like. I wanted to look up what the actual definition of still life is. The response it gave me was

-portrayal of something inanimate: a representation of inanimate objects such as fruit, flowers, or food, often in a domestic setting, in paintings, pictures, or photographs. In my opinion the definition is absolutely right all image painting of photographic are in an intimate small space with different objects.


Here is two more photos of the work by Vanessa.

The reason I have added this information about me visiting the exhibition in London was because I wanted to incorporate it into my current work. I am looking at objects that are decaying and want to do images of them using the still life definition.