What is still life:

Still life photography is a from of photography that focuses on everyday objects and captures them in a unique way to make the images more interesting and engaging to the viewer. It defines detail within the objects and brings it out showing the greater depth, making them something more that just a flower or piece of fruit for example. It started in the 17th century when photos and painting of still life objects became very popular, the names ‘still life photography’ comes from the Dutch word stilleven which directly translates.

Examples of still life photography:

Types of still life photography:

There are two main types still life photography, found still life photography and created still life photography.

Found still life photography:

This type of still life photography is when you have randomly or naturally find anything life flowers or fallen fruit etc, without any help e.g. not adding or moving anything around to make the ‘perfect’ image.

Created still life photography:

Whereas created still life photography is when is when you have set up objects life fruits, flowers or food purposely to take an image. The objects are very often simple objects that are placed to make them more interesting and engaging.

What is vanitas ?

Vanitas is a symbolic style of art which shows the certainty of death and purity of pleasure. The Dutch painting was first used in the 17th century and contains anything from books, fruit, cards, jewellery, wilting flowers, hourglasses, skulls, wine and many more objects like that. Giacomo Carissimi was one of the first people to make a Vanitas painting, he made his painting between 1604 and 1605.

what is Memento Mori ?

A memento mori is an object or item that reminds us of the inevitability of death such as a skull. These items are used widely in Vanitas as it matches the structure of the piece.

What kind of metaphors and symbols are used in still life and why?

There are many different objects that are used within Vanitas such as candles, cards, wine, dead flowers, skulls, jewellery, hourglasses, fruit, bubbles and more.

What do they represent:

candles – the human soul

cards – faulty of life goals

wine – pleasure of goods

dead flowers – beauty and death

jewellery – nature of beauty and sin of narcissism

hourglasses – the brevity of life and ephemeral nature of life

skulls – certainty of death

fruit – youth and beauty

bubbles – suddenness of death