Online Group Exhibition - "Fleeting Moments: Temporality and the Still Life" July 2021
Analog Forever Magazine is pleased to showcase 40 images in this month’s online exhibition, entitled “Fleeting Moments: Temporality and the Still Life,” and curated by fine art photographer and Analog Forever Magazine writer and curator, Niniane Kelley! The curator had this to say about this month’s exhibition:
The still life as a genre of art stretches all the way to antiquity, with depictions of food and inanimate objects decorating Egyptian tombs as nourishing necessities to carry into the afterlife and Roman villas as symbols of abundance and hospitality. A post-Rennaisance revival of the genre in Netherlandish painting, with their sumptuous displays of flowers and fruit, gives us the very term “still life,” from the Dutch stilleven. It is from this golden age of Dutch and Flemish painting that the straightforward depiction of inanimate objects becomes imbued with a more existential layer of meaning. By the use of allegory and symbolism in what is known as Vantias paintings, the artist seeks to remind the viewer of the transience of life and the impermanence of worldly sensations. Though the image is a moment of perfect beauty we know that the flowers will fade, the fruit will rot, the hourglass will run out of sand; what is depicted is not the objects themselves, but the passage of time and our knowledge of its ephemeral nature.
Time is a malleable concept, particularly when captured through the shutter of a camera. Photography itself is the act of capturing time - sometimes short, sometimes long - but its very creation is the freezing of a specific expanse of time that will never exist again. With an arsenal of artistic tools the still life can be a canvas for symbolism or a depiction of physics while depicting the very same objects. Compare Paul Cezanne’s post-impressionistic oil studies of apples with 20th century stop-motion photography pioneer Dr. Harold Edgerton’s nano-second long studies of apples being pierced with bullets. Yes, I’m literally comparing apples to apples, but somewhere in those apples exists an intersection of art and philosophy and science and time.
I wrote the above while I was in the midst of being bed-ridden and wracked by fever dreams following my second Covid shot. After I regained my senses and was waiting to see the final submissions I started to worry: Was that too weird and esoteric? Will anyone get what I'm blabbering about? Will anyone actually submit anything to this?
And, hoo-boy, I did not need to worry. Our Analog family responded resoundingly with the most challenging judging I've had yet. I am always blown away by the creativity, ingenuity, and imagination of our readers and I am, in turn, inspired by everything you do. And normally we write a whole new intro when we present the final gallery, but, honestly, I don't know that I can top that fever-dream nonsense.
I'd like to offer shoutouts to a few photographers in particular:
Robert Sulkin's image, fittingly for this exhibit, titled “Vanitas” is a fantastic use of the traditional still life elements we've inherited from the Dutch Renaissance, but it is constructed and presented in a way that feels decidedly modern.
I feel a special fondness for Michael Starkman's neat and orderly row of film boxes, dated and annotated with such precision, keeping company with Avedon's Dovima.
And, finally, the image that made me say, “Oh, that is brilliant,” Dave Shuken’s “Hot and Hotter.” I think it's such a clever interpretation of our theme of time, and one I never would have thought of.
~ Niniane Kelley
GALLERY
About the Curator
Niniane Kelley is a fine art photographer living and working in San Francisco and Lake County, California. A native of the Bay Area, she is a San Jose State University graduate, earning a BFA in Photography in 2008.
Drawn to photography for both the immediacy of the image making process and the intrinsic alchemy of the darkroom ritual, she crafts the majority of her imagery using traditional 19th century processes which give each piece its own unique character.
She teaches workshops in the Bay Area and surrounding environs. She most recently worked as a photographer and manager at San Francisco’s tintype portrait studio, Photobooth.
Connect with Niniane Kelley on her Website and on Instagram!