The intertwining of art and commercial photography is nowhere more evident than in the genre of still life
Photography may have triumphed in art over the last couple of decades, but questions linger as to whether art gets the best out of it. Many artistically minded photographers admit to finding art an interesting place to visit but they wouldn’t want to live there. It can be airless, self-serving and very slow. (Photography permits rapid artistic development for those who want it, but curators and collectors rarely do.) Moreover, given that art photography triumphed by remaking, diverting or otherwise contemplating the medium’s ‘applied’ forms – such as the document, the film still, the advertisement and the archival image – there is always much in common between art photographs and those we see elsewhere.
This essay originally appeared in Frieze magazine, no. 143
