Vanitas: Not-so-still Life

A collection of photographs that serve as a reminder that nothing is eternal.

Vanitas is a still-life painting of a 17th-century Dutch genre containing symbols of death or change as a reminder of their inevitability.
The vanitas may be seen as a representation of time. But even the vanitas still-life paintings are subject to decay and disappear.

In 2008, I created a series of 3 Vanitas still life photographs. Inspired by traditional Vanitas paintings, but with carefully chosen elements that give them a modern twist: a skull with orthodontist braces, a bucket of KFC fried chicken, a plastic cup with red soda, etc. I printed these images on cotton paper and “treated” them with humidity and a culture of fungus in a dark place for 10 years. The process of decay was photographed and printed again every few years, to document the transformation. The collection consists of 17 images, and shows the stages of decay, from a few white spots, to an abstract mass of mold to nothing.

Skull and cup

Torta y Tehuacán de fresa

Flowers & KFC