In Latin "Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerunt?", meaning "Where are those who were before us?" This work is the first vanitas work I have produced. A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Still-life painting has been a genre that most clearly demonstrates ownership and the purchasing act of humans throughout history. As Roland Barthes claimed still-life painting is a "commodity empire". The genre of still-life illustrates the glamor of wealth that affluent people of the upper class have earned through colonizing people and regional places. Still life is about what power gives you personally. It is a genre that hilariously tells that innocent story that secures money, and Still Life tells its owner: You are what you have. Still life maps the intersections of economy and power at the top of an equally important. My photography lifts the glamor off the still-life genre and shows the type of decay within an unfair world-order behind the scenes. Our nature and world are decomposing as a result of the problematic relationship that the human race has developed with nature from past to present. I criticize the problematic relationships that humanity has developed with nature through the still-life painting genre. My works are more like a painting than a photograph. The audience who sees my works gets confused as to whether it is a painting or a photograph. This is actually a trap I set for the audience. By using the variegated colors of still life, I imprison their gaze in my work. The audience, who looks at the work a little more carefully, finds something different from what they expected, the hidden truth. As I believe in direct narration, I name these series of photographs ‘decayedness’.
richcaldwell
