Seeing this series made me remember falling in love with meticulously set up “still life” photographs. I’m talking about Anna Tomczak, Jo Whaley, and Carol Golemboski, here. I think my favorite kind of photography is “non-traditional still life”–pictures that are made either from above or otherwise straight-on, and of course, featuring animal parts or paraphernalia.
I love the light and lush color and saturation of these images, as well as the artist’s enormous attention to detail.
From the artist’s statement: I recently told someone (with a straight face) that I make photographs to ward off evil. Perhaps I am a practitioner of a new and makeshift form of genteel voodoo. Each fresh photograph is a spell or incantation. This is new Juju, sanitized, pseudo-Santeria that employs objects rich with association and/or brimming with nostalgia. With these images I am photographically petitioning and attempting to placate the Gods. I pray for good fortune, boons and blessings. Giving in to my inner hypochondriac, I beg to avoid specific maladies and misfortune. In so many ways, photography is magical. It’s easy to get carried away by the process.
I have drawn inspiration from what little I know about the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic (which embraces the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete) and modern mixed-media, found art assemblage. Surrealist and hyperrealist painters have also influenced my approach. Like the surrealists, I love odd juxtapositions. The hyperrealist painters used photography as reference, exaggerating detail. But instead of paintings that look photographic, these still lives are painterly photographs.
He also has a great bio on his website.
From “Natura Mortalis”
Visit artist's site: danielmosherlong.com
Found via: Shots Magazine
Posted May 13th, 2013
