By IMOGEN SARA SMITH [The Threepenny Review] – A photograph is something salvaged and proof of something lost. As the camera’s shutter opens and closes with a sound like a mechanical kiss, the present moment becomes, forever, the past. Photographs can slice time finer than the human eye, revealing the moment when a galloping horse takes all four feet off the ground, or when the broken surface of milk forms a ring of points like a chessman’s crown. We reach for our cameras when we see what we know won’t last, a sunset or a baby’s smile or a woman balanced in the air over a puddle.
Why photograph inanimate objects, which neither move nor change? Set aside for the moment explorations of abstract form (Paul Strand’s flower pots, Edward Weston’s peppers) and glamorous advertisements for material luxuries (Edward Steichen’s cigarette lighters, Irving Penn’s melted brie). Many of the earliest photographs were still life of necessity: only statues, books, and urns could hold still long enough to leave their images on salted paper. But with the still lifes of Roger Fenton, sharpness of detail and richness of texture introduce a new note: the dusty skin of a grape puckers around the stem, a flower petal curls and darkens at the edge. Photographic still life, like painted still life, is about our sensual experience of everyday objects, and the inevitability of decay. Penn famously photographed cigarette butts and trash collected from the gutter, rotting fruit and vegetables, discarded clothes, and other examples of dead nature.
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