Laura Letinsky

Laura Letinsky writes:
When I first began working on the series I was interested in trying to figure out how, and why, Dutch seventeenth-century society was the site for so much still life work. I felt a little bit like I was groping about trying to understand their formal and descriptive language. As I worked the similarities in cultures( our appreciation for material goods, our multi-ethnic and class-based economies, the attitudes towards the home as a space of intimate display) began to draw on me.



This and the photographs from The Michael Hoppen Gallery

The work was influenced by her fascination with Dutch-Flemish and Italian still-life painting, also a documentation of shifting social attitudes that were the result of exploration, colonisation, economic gain and seeing as truth/proof. However, she does not show interest in the allure of the meal that usually awaits some unseen viewer’s consumption, rather she is curious about this site after its objects have been touched, devoured and ignored. By photographing the remains of a meal and its preparation, she engages the photograph’s transformative qualities, changing what is typically cast aside into something beautiful.

I found this beautiful body of work really resonating with me, had I done my M.A, my remit would have been almost word for word the same.Yet the results could not be more different. I did manages to explore the theme a little before time ran out. If I ever managed to work out how to use the scanner I will let you see.