Glass and Ceramic Still Lifes

Among the very first photographs ever made in the 1840’s by the early practitioners, Niepce, Daguerre and Fox Talbot were pictures of still life arrangements. Film during those days was very slow to react to light and that fact required long exposures. In those days, photographing things that did not move became the way to go. The genre of Still Life continues to interest artists and photographers to this day, including me!

I have always been drawn to making photographs of things. In a picture, objects can play the dual role of standing as themselves but also form architectures and shapes where new pictorial ideas and meanings can be suggested. Organizing things sitting on a table makes me feel like I am in charge of creating brand new worlds, relationships and new senses of order and space! This feeling, of course, is what is thrilling to every artist creating such still life work.

 Glass and ceramic materials are wonderfully reflective and what I love the most in my photographs is how the elements of light, surface and translucency play hand in hand to appear to meld into each other in transformative ways. This effect is particularly dramatic in the images that I make combining several photographic exposures of the same objects but physically rearranged so that an echo of Cubism comes to mind.