Untitled #80

Laura Letinsky’s color photographs draw from the Dutch tradition of still life painting. In this genre of painting, depictions of sensuous, luxurious objects in states of decay and abandonment symbolize the transience of life and its material pleasures. In Untitled #80, Letinsky enters this dialogue through the medium of photography. Letinsky arranges contemporary objects in spare, unoccupied domestic interiors, and uses unconventional perspective and composition to create an uncanny, unsettling effect. States Letinsky, “I’m interested in that paradox about this home that’s supposedly organic and natural...it’s an uneasy space.” Though human subjects remain conspicuously absent in this piece, the vestiges of consumption -- stray crumbs, miscellaneous debris, and cut fruit -- allude to the everyday rituals of human relationships. Letinsky alienates the viewer by pushing her objects -- a translucent candy dish, shriveling pieces of fruit, fragments of food, an unnaturally-hued wedge of peach -- to the far edge of the table’s surface. These visual elements create tension between the familiarity of the objects and the ambiguity of their relationship to their environment, the viewer and one another. In this way, Letinsky’s work evokes a sense of loss, absence, and desire.

Resource: Smart Collecting, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 2004.