Five Photographers Reimagine Still Life with Satire, Surrealism and Personal Homage

Five contemporary photographers are pushing the boundaries of still life photography, transforming a traditional genre focused on everyday objects into commentary on modern society. Olivia Locher creates satirical "how-to" series that humorously depict unrealistic human aspirations, with works like "How To Be Taller" (2014) and "How To Make Ice-cream" (2015). Jonathan Knowles, an award-winning advertising photographer, arranges mundane objects like candles, wheels, and seesaws against pastel backdrops, questioning the role of analogue machines in a digital world. William Mullen spent four years and three seasons creating the "Odd Apples" series, featuring 90 hyper-stylised images of apples that reference the fruit's symbolic power across cultures. Pia Kintrup's "horror vacui" series captures organic and non-organic items in states of dissolution, including onion skins, cardboard boxes, and pistachio shells, creating melancholy post-consumption scenes. Andoni Beristain combines large-scale outdoor still lifes with curated studio photographs, with his latest series "Pieze Madre" (Mother Piece) serving as a homage to his mother Ángeles Isidora Zabalo, who died in 2022. According to Tate, still life traditionally celebrates material pleasures while warning of their ephemerality. These photographers reveal the absurdity and occasional hilarity of contemporary life through their reimagined approaches to the genre.