Light driving darkness before it spilt itself profusely upon the corners and bosses; and yet heaped up darkness in mounds of unmoulded shape.
The Waves, Virginia Wolf
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| ©Tanya Decheva, 2020 |
My mother have always had a great interest in semantics. For as far as I remember she would hear a word, any word can spike interest in her, and she would start her research. She has different kinds of dictionaries, but her favorite is the "Foreign words in Bulgarian language" (I'm not sure if that's the exact translation). I admire her inexhaustible curiosity. As I got older more and more words intrigued me with their meaning, origin, usage etc. This post would be some kind of a semantic search with no definite conclusion.
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| ©Tanya Decheva, 2020 |
Nature Morte from French means literally dead nature. Most European countries use this term in one way or another. The term Still Life in the English language originates from the Dutch stilleven, meaning that the image depicts inanimate objects. So here's what I've been pondering about...Knowing the meaning of nature morte, I immediately think of paintings and photographs with dead animals, usually game. Mostly I associate this word with art made in the 17th century. Nowadays less and less authors depict such themes in their work. My main idea is that the use of nature morte has grown old and the term that articulates a life that stands still is more appropriate.
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| ©Tanya Decheva, 2020 |
I hope this doesn't sound too pretentious and yes, I know that fruits, flowers, etc. are all again in a way dead. But when your images portray objects that were never alive how can you say they're dead nature? Many modern day paintings and photos in the genre even exclude natural objects. Language does evolve in time, but can you replace a word, a term, that was used for such a long time. I believe not and yet again that doesn't stop me from wondering what if...
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| ©Tanya Decheva, 2020 |
There's another thing that's been going trough my mind - how does genres advance in time and how they've gradually mixed with each other. I'll be writing about that another time. Let's not get carried away. About the photos in this post...Since the start of the lockdown, I've spent so much time at home. And I can't go a day without photographing something, anything. So that's how I embraced still lifes. They're not arranged, I prefer to just see it and then shoot. The act of arranging a photo reminds me of art classes at school, when we had to paint pots and onions and plates. It was eclectic. I hope you enjoyed my thoughts and would love to hear you opinion on the matter.
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