Still life images typically consist of fruits, flowers or household objects. The image captures a staged assortment of objects, placed to simply show them off or to have a hidden meaning.
17th Century Realism:
During the 17th century, still life painting were an emerging genre in Dutch culture. These paintings were known for their realism and ability to show off the objects in them. Since painting was still an art for the wealthy, many still life images from this time were commissioned by the rich to show off their wealth and economic success.
Banquet Still Life, Adriaen van Utrecht, 1644
Vanitas:
However, the Dutch also used still life to communicate a slightly more morbid message. Vanitas paintings are easily recognizable by the presence of a human skull in the image. These painting aimed to convey the consequence of vanity and giving in to pleasure. Symbols of death greatly contrasted those of riches in other still life paintings.
Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit c.1620-5 Sir Nathaniel Bacon
Sir Nathaniel Bacon did not paint professionally but he was a skilled amateur artist. The cook maid surrounded with lavish produce, usually associated with Dutch and Flemish art, is unusual in England for the period. The painting is quite unusual for British art of this period since it shows a lavish still life. Still life paintings became established in Britain in the late seventeenth century.
Every item depicted in the image is known to have been growing in England. Although every item represented in the painting was grown in England, not all would have been in season. According to a letter, Bacon was growing melons at his estate in East Anglia, and was known to have a keen interest in horticulture. The painting reveals the artist’s interest in gardening which was becoming increasingly fashionable during this time period.
His wealth let him paint for his own pleasure. We know that Nathaniel Bacon travelled in the Southern Netherlands during this period and that paintings of cook maids were prevalent in the southern Netherlands in the late 16 Century and early 17th Century. He may have travelled there, trained there and become accustomed to this compositional style while he was there.
The subject most likely would have had erotic connotations. The large amount of ripe melons surrounding the cookmaid echo her cleavage.
On the 10th of June 1907, An audience of 600 was invited to watch brothers Louis and August Lumière, develop their newest invention which was a combined system which was an additive colour screen process. However the Lumière brothers first patented the Auto-Chrome in 1903 and presented the discovery to Académie des Sciences in 1904.
The first Auto-Chrome colour image in Jersey was done in 1904 by Emile Guiton, was of Fruit.
Emile Guiton
History of Auto-Chrome:
In 1907, the invention of Auto-Chrome was reaching worldwide audiences in different areas, such as photographically, scientific and culturally. A chemist called Fritz Wentze wrote of the ‘tremendous enthusiasm’ for the first colour plate, and spoke “this was an experience of which only someone who was living at the time can have a very clear idea”.
Autochrome plates are covered in microscopic red, green and blue coloured potato starch grains. When the photograph is taken, light passes through these colour filters to 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.
Do an Autochrome photo didn’t require any special equipment, the photographers could use their existing cameras. However they did have to remember to put the Autochrome plate in the camera, with the glass side nearest the lens.
Cost of Autochrome:
Due to the manufacturing process for the Autochrome, it became more expensive than monochrome, therefore, the Autochrome plates were sold in a box of 4 rather than the usual 12. In 1910, a box of 4 quarter plates cost 3 Shillings (15p), whereas if you wanted a dozen monochrome plates it was 2 Shillings (10p).
For my detailed images, I decided to focus on hands and fingers, as I think they can be an interesting way to tell a slightly more subtle story. I wanted a range of different images; contrasting the older hands of my mum with the much smoother and newer hands of my baby cousin. Then to oppose these images, I used the gloves that my dad was wearing to show a more closed off and mysterious look, aided by the smoke.
Interior/Exterior Shots
For the interior images I wanted to make the house look like it was recently abandoned, which was why I decided to leave a lot of small Mise-En-Scene items out on various surfaces like drinks cans in the kitchen, items on the bedside table and hairdryer on the bed. Originally I thought of clearing all surfaces and having a much cleaner image, and you can see this experimentation in my first images of the lounge. I also began to play with reflections on the interior, and I decided to carry this on to the exterior of the house. For instance, on the image of the shed, I decided to get the reflection of the fence in the window, however I then noticed that the house’s roofline behind the shed matched up quite well with the one in the reflection. For the final shot of the house, I decided to use the reflections in the window to create a cross and giving the image some abstract elements.
Still life images is a work of art that where the subject of the image is either natural (food, flowers, animals, plants, etc) or man-made (glasses, books, jewelry, etc). Still life allows artists to have a lost of freedom and to experiment and rearrange objects of the image.
Many of the first and original idea of still life paintings are found in the ancient Egyptian tombs and monuments. These paintings give an insight to the life and events happening during these times. But also images drawn in the tombs of those who had died, had objects drawn so they could take them to the afterlife and have. The drawings weren’t a piece of artwork for the Egyptians they had a functioning purpose in their beliefs. The images on the walls are known as relief’s which is a drawing/painting carved into the walls, normally in the colors; blue, black, red, green and gold.
Egyptian painting
Along with the Egyptians, cavemen also use to draw onto the walls and ceilings of their caves, they did this up to 40,000 years ago. Their paintings include simple shapes, such as large wild animals (horses, deer, bison) as these animals were hunted down by the cavemen as a source of nutrition. However, the drawings of humans were rare and and weren’t as detailed as the drawings of the animals. The images include pigments of red, yellow and charcoal or even by using rocks to indent the walls. It is said that some of the drawings were made by blowing pigment onto the wall through a homemade pipe of some sorts into the center and then being decorated by lines and dashes.
Cave painting
As we moved on through history, images began to develop, as equipment was invented. Still images started to become of flowers, flowers and fruit, breakfast pieces and more. This all came through from the Dutch Republic as they began to rise and create a national identity, they started to trade with the Indians and South Americans and the popularity of paintings grew, this opened up a whole new market. As this trade flung open, it began to introduce Dutch Artists of the 17th century, this is where still images portrayed inanimate objects.
Ambrosius Bosschaert was a Dutch still life painter, born in 1573. He specialised in painting flowers, along with his three other sons. The flowers he painted were symmetrical, with accuracy in the smallest parts of the paintings, sometimes containing symbolic and religious meaning. Bosschaert was one of the first to specialist in still life. A few of his images include.
His images are captivating, in the sense of the precision and the colours he uses are appealing to the human eye. The images showing bloomed flowers, they are at the best of their lives before they die. Bosschaert painted so many different images, but this image stood out to me;
This image holds so much colour and diversity that it catches the human eye, mainly due to the fact of the blue sky background with the multi coloured flowers. Some of the flowers in this image hold a religious value in the christian faith, such as the rose and lily’s in the image. A lily is said to represent the purity and divinity of Jesus, the flower is normally displayed during Easter as lily’s where said to of grew around where Jesus was crucified. It also represent the resurrection as a lily rise from a single bulb which represents Jesus rising from the tomb. Along with the rose representing purity and they are reminders of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. They are used to commemorate important events during Christ’s journey. This meaning that this image may have been painted during the easter time as a memory or to show respect, however in the bottom right corner there is a butterfly. Butterfly’s hold meanings, just like flowers but their meanings stand as the growth and change in life and on earth, that they have a journey of freedom, freedom for their past, they are breathtaking. With all this said the image can have a meaning of growing to your best, as the flowers are drawn at their highest point in their life, from a little bud to a bloomed, colourful flower, just like how the butterfly develops through its life of freedom. It is saying to grow to highest point in life and enjoy it.
A Still Life painting is a piece that features an arrangement of inanimate objects as its subject. Usually, these items are on a table and often include organic objects such as fruit and flowers and household items.
Northern Renaissance artists popularised still life imagery with their flower paintings. These pieces typically showcase colourful flora when they are blooming. These paintings became important in the early 17th century, when Northern Renaissance artists became interested in creating realistic studies of everyday items.
The Dutch Golden Age artists created vanities paintings. These paintings are inspired by the genre memento mori which translates to “remember that you have to die” in Latin. These pieces often pair cut flowers with objects like human skulls, candles and hourglasses to comment on the short nature of life.
Still life were a great opportunity to display skill in painting textures and surfaces in great detail and with realistic light effects. Food of all kinds laid out on a table, silver cutlery, intricate patterns and subtle folds in table cloths and flowers all challenged painters. Mostly all still life had a moralistic message, usually concerned with the shortness of life; This is known as the vanitas theme.
Vanitas Paintings – A Metaphor for Transience
Symbolism was present in every form of Still Life but never more significant than in Vanitas work where everything spoke of the inevitability of death: Skull – reminder of the certainty of death; The watch or hourglass – the brevity of life. Flowers and butterflies can be interpreted in the same way, and a peeled lemon was, like life, attractive to look at but bitter to taste. Art Historians debate how much, and how seriously, the vanitas theme is implied in still life paintings without explicit imagery such as a skull.
For my photo shoot I placed asked by subjects (my mum and dad) what room they believe they spend the most time in and where they find them selves most comfortable, this last point was essential as a lot of the time my parents are not in these rooms most of the time but it where they enjoy being the most and where they most feel at ease and comfortable. This was essential for the project as it aloud me to reflect their personalities through where they are most at home and comforted .Furthermore, i used the natural lighting found around my house and in each room as well as using the natural lighting coming from the windows to help produce the best images possible; this factor also help fully represent the most naturalist situation and truly highlight the significance of the environmental portraits and the deeper meaning that is shown throughout. After taking the photos i download them onto my computer and opened them up in light room which gave me the opportunity to scan through they efficiently and select the best images that i wanted to continue working on and edit.
After finally selecting my images i needed to decide how i wanted to continue on with them; overall i had some black and white images, colour images, overlaid images and finally some images i simply left the same as i believe the image did not need editing and the original was enough to project what I wanted it to.
Black and white images:
For my black and white images i generally chose the image that high over exposure due to the natural lighting of the room as it enabled be to help control this factor therefore leading t an overall improvement in the image. From the black and white images it also help me set a fairly neutral tone compared having a varse majority of bright colour which help control your eye to fixate on one point. For me this something i wanted to avoid with the up coming images; this was because there are so fine details in the background that i wanted the view to notice for example the Channel poster and my mum spotty scarf. This aloud an overall understanding of each image to be projected and represented.
Coloured images:
For my coloured images i wanted to project the comparison between my mum and dads comfort place as well as their opposite personalities, For my dad he was in his garage and has a more warm feeling to the image with a busy background, and light coming from behind him. Compared to my mum who was in the lounge with a more colder editing to the image, with natural lighting shining on to her face with a more simplistic background. To me this offers a large conceptual feature to be projected and displayed; then finally ending on a sharper image of them together which combined the colder and warmer image together creating a more contrasted and colourful image.
No editing image:
For these two image i decided i wanted to keep them the same to highlight the natural lighting and the type of colours our house has that will help reflect and represent their personalises as well as this in both images they have be#aming smiles which i think add to the idea of needing to be edited and the overall deeper meaning of the images.
Evaluation:
Overall I am responsibly happy and pleased with the final out come of my images of my home sweet home environmental images; i am pleased with the backgrounds and the concepts behind the decision making of what room my parents wanted to be photographed as it highlighted the essential idea about being comfortable and well ‘feeling at home’ this helped aid the deeper meaning and conceptual factors. Furthermore, i am happy with my edits as i feel it really helps demonstrate and represent each of my parents personalities and how they come together and work well as a team. However, next time i would maybe try get what room they are most comfortable in and where they most enjoy being compared to where they actually spend the most amount of time as this would enable an extremely interesting and different point of view as well as well as showing a further understanding of environmental photography and how it is used to tell and represent an individuals story through the use of photography and carefully though out editing.
