Paulette Tavormina:

Paullette Tavormina lives in new York. she gets a lot of the flowers, fruit etc from the local farmers. Her photographs are said to resemble ‘old master’ painters. Her photography style is based on old Still Life paintings from the 17th century.

“I have long been drawn to the seventeenth century Old Master Still Life painters Giovanna Garzoni, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Adriaen Coorte. I am particularly fascinated by Zurbarán’s mysterious use of dramatic light, Garzoni’s masterful compositions and colour palette, and Coorte’s unique placements of objects.”

– Paulette Tavormina

I chose Paulette Tavormina as I love how it really does look like she has brought the old still life painting of the 17th century to life. I also like how she has captured elements such the smoke from the candle and the light on the bubble. She manages to bring the old symbolism of the period to contemporary photography.

The background of this photo is completely black with out only focus on those object on the table. The eye is naturally drawn to light, therefore having the objects all in light, allows the viewer to be focused on what the photographer, in this case Paulette Tavormina, wanted the viewer to focus on. as it is the tallest object in the photo, the eye is immediately drawn to the candle and from there your eye is lead by the glass pointing at the skull, thus telling a story. The smoke also captures the light making the negative space around the objects more visually pleasing. The light is coming in at an angle form the side which creates dynamic shadows.

The skull is as an image is meant to signify death and act as a reminder of ones own mortality in old vanitas paintings. The snuffed out candle and pipe is also mean to signify life eventually being snuffed out. Also part of typical Vanitas and still life imagery. The over turned glass is there to represent the emptiness of life. The red wine might be referencing the blood of christ because in old still life paintings, grapes would represent this. Therefore the red wine may be the contemporary answer to this. The decaying flowers on the skull, along with the butterfly is to represent the inevitability of death within the beauty of life. The books within this photo show the artificial virtues of life and the pride in knowledge.

How would I respond to this?

I would think about how i could also incorporate things other than objects into my piece to make it stand out and have some contrast e.g smoke, reflections. I like how Paulette Tavormina angles the light and I would also use that as it matches with my preferred style of photography.

Autochrome is an early colour photographic process created by the Lumiere brothers in France in 1903. It was the main colour photographic process available to photographers until as late as the 1930s when Dufaycolour became popular. It consists of a glass plate coated on one side with microscopic grains of strach dyed red-orange, green and blue-violet, the grains act as colour filters. Lampback fills the spaces between grains and a black ans white panchromaticsilver halideemulsiom is coated on the top of the filter layer. The autochrome was loaded into the camera with the bare glass side facing the lens so that the light passed through the colour filters before reaching the photographic emulsion. The plate is processed to produce a positive transparency. Light, passing through the coloured starch grains, combines to recreate a full colour image of the original subject.

Unlike ordinary black-and-white plates, the Autochrome was loaded into the camera with the bare glass side facing the lens so that the light passed through the mosaic filter layer before reaching the emulsion. The use of an additional special orange-yellow filter in the camera was required to block ultraviolet light and restrain the effects of violet and blue light, parts of the spectrum to which the emulsion was overly sensitive. Because of the light loss due to all the filtering, Autochrome plates required much longer exposures than black-and-white plates and films, which meant that a tripod or other stand had to be used and that it was not practical to photograph moving subjects. The plate was reversal-processed into a positive transparency that is, the plate was first developed into a negative image but not “fixed”, then the silver forming the negative image was chemically removed, then the remaining silver halide was exposed to light and developed, producing a positive image.

When Letinsky first started out in photography, she was a portrait photographer, however as she matured through her photography, she moved onto working with still life, which is what made her famous. Laura Letinsky's still life photographs are describes as "elegant, subdued and gently but relentlessly off-putting, her large-format photographs have an arresting presence that seems out of step with time. At the same time, though, art history suffuses her meticulously constructed scenes as fully as the softened daylight does the sparse interiors she photographs." 

Letinsky's photos are reminiscent to the famous Dutch still life's, however they include "freshness, ripeness and decay." However what makes Letinsky's still lifes different to the Dutch still lifes are that Letinsky's is modernised by featuring modern brands such as styrophone cups and coca cola cans. They also contrast the Dutch still lifes and the Dutch focused on wealth and status, as Letinsky's are a more raw and down-to-earth version of still lifes that every social class has/understands.

Quotes from:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B40pOw0Hw2JMcWFSQV9wclZNTkU/view 

Laura Letinsky's photos are for the audience to presume human activity, without the presence of any poeple in her work. Her imperfections that she creates in her photographs such as chewed food, crumpled napkins/tablecloths and spilt glasses create an image that the audience is able to percieve as a personal situation such as someone leaving in a rush. By adding a personal touch to her work, Letinsky is able to make her viewers emotionally attatched.