Still life = sentimentalist BS?

[cyrus]

Still life is a worry! It may be sentimentalist. It may be coldly analytical. But I often wonder if it is worth doing at all when I am consciously making photographs in an art (controversy conceded) context.

Instead of making a photograph of the spectacles on the old book maybe I should put the book and the spectacles themselves into the gallery. The still life itself counts as an assemblage or installation and galleries, not to mention arts graduates, seem to be more fond of such stuff than photographs.

I think arranged still lifes have an element of sculpture to them - see for example Sugimoto's mathematical sculpture work.

[Jim Rice]

For my money Ralph's flower shots are sublime, just saying.

[Brian Ellis]

It all depends on who's making the photographs. Ray McSavaney has made some of the most incredible black and white flower still lifes you'll ever see, they put Robert Mapelthorpe's much better known black and white flower photographs to shame. He's probably even got a calla lilly in there somewhere (though he only photographs flowers that he grows himself so maybe not). Any subject can be "sentimental BS" if all it conveys is sentimental BS. Great photographers like Ray show us new ways of seeing subjects that others present only as sentimental BS.

[matthew blais]

I'm happy there's still life in me..

[Jim Galli]

Rocks, Trees, Bubbly white water at 1/2 second, Yosemite, now that's sentimental BS.

[turtle]

OK still life gurus, stop mesing about with books and spectacles: Make a plucked chicken look sexy!

[Vaughn]

I'm happy there's still life in me..

Is there still life in Riverside, California?


"Rocks, Trees, Bubbly white water at 1/2 second, Yosemite, now that's sentimental BS." Watch it there Jim, I resemble that remark!

Still lifes of flowers, old barns (old anythings), rocks , trees, waterfalls, blank skies over tiny bits of New Mexico landscape, studio nudes, seashores, beggars, and everything ever photographed or will be photographed can be sentimental BS. I photograph light, and even that can be BS to some, beauty to others.

I don't really care how many people think my "Rocks, Trees, Bubbly white water at 1/2 second, Yosemite", is sentimental BS. As long as there are some who find in them some wonder or beauty, perhaps some appreciation for the light around them or perhaps even learn a little from the photos, then that is the icing on the cake of my enjoyment of Seeing and making the print.

Vaughn

PS What I think makes photography so difficult, is taking the sentimental BS and making something significant out of it. I do not know which would be more difficult -- taking meaningful images at a refugee camp or of a single calle lilly.

[PViapiano]

Brian...I saw a few of Ray McSavaney's flower prints at FreeStyle not too long ago, and I can't seem to get them out of my mind!

Hey all, read Robert Adams' Beauty in Photography...

[Mark_C]

chicken for turtle

http://homepage.mac.com/zbigniew/pages/food/kurak.html

cheers
-Mark C

[Duane Polcou]

I do not remember who said this, but it my favorite photography quote ever:

"Creativity in photography can be described as photographing something new, or if not new, in such a way that has never been seen before."

These "sentimental BS" images are so not because of content, but because of lack of imagination, talent, or ambition. People call images of Yosemite trite or sentimental or whatever, but if saw a portfolio of images from the tops of the waterfalls looking down , it would still be Yosemite but it could be so original. Like Galen Rowell with a view camera.

Alas, I live in NJ and sweat at the top of a ladder...