Assignment 9
Still Life Photography
Contemporary Vanitas
Still, life posed a challenge to me. I thought about how to make a modern still life, so I looked to my generation and our endless obsession with fleeting trends. This elitist needs to fit in at all times. So, I gravitated toward objects considered Y2K vintage, a trend that dominated and is still dominating some of the zeitgeist over the past couple of years. I want to showcase a chaotic and heavy-filled scene with objects everywhere.
The backdrop was challenging. I wanted to pick something a teenage girl would have in her bedroom, so I chose an enclosed space with a pink couch. It felt young and fresh. Despite the many challenges it posed, I thought it was the perfect backdrop to display this still life. I wanted my surroundings to also play a factor, to show how fleeting that color or fabric may be. This entire photograph showcases the end of trends and beauty for the sake of the future. Overall, I wanted this to be a modern take on gluttonous vanity, and at the end of the day, I’m unsure if I got there through my maximalist objects.
I chose the Vanitas style, but I wanted to make it more tailored to my life or what interests me. Gen-Z is obsessed with the Y2K craze, retro CDs, magazines, roses, dainty jewelry, or even cheugy-looking home decorations. Vanitas is about the vanity of earthly achievements and pleasures, and Y2K culture embodies earthy maximalism. If Vanitas is meant to critique culture, this contemporary take on it, looking at the possessions in the photo, shows that everything has a shelf life. I wanted to take objects that could all be seen in an early 2000s teenage girl’s bedroom, taking from Rom-Com stereotypes, using that to add items to this photographic fodder. So, I snatched CDs and their players, wired headphones, and vintage magazines from the '90s like they would be living in any girl’s bedroom then. I also included flowers to showcase the dying/fleeting nature of high school beauty or romance and how passionate it is but burns out faster than a moth to a flame. I picked roses because those are the only flowers teenage boys know. Finally, I added a small jewelry box with some perfume sticking out to show how stuffed these boxes can become, and teenagers throw anything anywhere that fits. I chose perfume and nestled a ring with a heart attached to it to show how love and smell can be the same or how some girls tie beauty and romance with scents fed to them by magazine samples or commercials that radiate sex through fragrance. This scene describes vanity, from the CDs and how they must always listen to music to be popular to the daintiest of jewelry to show that beauty can be accessorized.