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themes (flower and fruit still lifes), to modern interpretations of the vanitas symbols (constructions with objects that refer to our everyday surroundings) to nearly abstract, three-dimensional still lifes in the exhibition space. Photography in the Netherlands has In 2011 Foam is celebrating its tenth had a tradition of experimenting with anniversary. The museum first opened staged photography since the 1970s. its doors in 2001 with the Dutch Delight The still life has also been a major theme exhibition, taking ‘Dutch Light’ as its in this tradition. Exaggeration and central subject. It was a typically Dutch enlargement are devices which originat- historical art theme, for which Dutch ed from advertising and much of the painting is famous the world over. Now, staged photography of that time was Still/ in Still/Life – Contemporary Dutch inspired by conceptual as well as adver- Photography, Foam has put together tising photography. an exhibition comprised of work by Many of the photographers in this Dutch photographers giving surprising exhibition also work at this juncture. interpretations of another classic They move easily between established subject in Dutch art history: the still life. art institutions, the editorial world of The still life could be considered magazines and publications, and the a composition of lifeless, impassive commercial advertising sphere. A clear, Life objects. Although the Romans painted recognisable style can be seen in both the first still lifes, the genre mainly their personal and their commercial became known through 17th-century work, such as that of so-called ‘Dutch Dutch and Flemish paintings. These Design’ which alludes to a typically paintings can often be categorised by Dutch design aesthetic: minimalist, Contemporary subject: still lifes with flowers, still lifes experimental, innovative, unconventional of food on richly laid-out tables and and with humour. vanitas still lifes illustrating the transient The flower still lifes by Scheltens & Dutch nature of earthly life. Thousands of Abbenes are close to being intoxicating. people still enjoy this art every day The intense colours seduce the viewer in museums such as the Rijksmuseum and pull one into the image. They are Photography in Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis more explicit than 17th-century still lifes, in The Hague. in which the painters gathered their For a diverse group of contemporary floral bouquets from far and wide, and photographers, the Dutch still life from various seasons as well – idealised remains a source of inspiration, but with bouquets that could never have really a modernised and updated concept existed. But Scheltens & Abbenes never in a contemporary visual language. The try to pull the wool over our eyes. The Potatoes series by Anuschka Blommers strong two-dimensionality and graphic and Niels Schumm, for example, is far quality reveal that what we see here from classic, but instead starkly graphic is a constructed bouquet. The work of – and due to its subject matter also very Scheltens & Abbenes deals with the Dutch. The works on view in the exhibi- medium of photography itself, just as tion range from those based on classic most of the other work in the exhibition. For Fake Flowers in Full Colour (2009), and presentation of rising talents. Lernert & Sander, Charlott Markus, working on their own, trained in the Jaap Scheeren and Hans Gremmen Young talent is also a major area of Katja Mater, Krista van der Niet, Netherlands, who are also influential bought some fake flowers and paint interest in Foam’s collection. Jaap Scheeren & Hans Gremmen, and working innovatively internationally. and took a photo of this bouquet. The Still/Life – Contemporary Dutch Scheltens & Abbenes, Diana Scherer, Their work is, in both form as well as in They then broke down the image into Photography exhibition was not created Johannes Schwartz, Ingmar Swalue, visual language, extremely important four colour separations: cyan, magenta, at the curator’s desk but arose from Marianne Vierø, Anne de Vries and for current developments in photography. yellow and black. They placed the many intriguing talks in the studios Qiu Yang. These conversations, insights, bouquets in these four colours in the of Melanie Bonajo, Kim Boske, discussions and the enthusiasm studio again and re-photographed Blommers & Schumm, Elspeth Diederix, that emerged from them led to this them. In theory, if these images were Fleur van Dodewaard, Uta Eisenreich, exhibition. It shows that striking laid over each other, the archetypal Peggy Franck, Marnix Goossens, and innovative developments can be image would be recreated. It is interest- Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, Paul Kooiker, seen in the field of art photography. ing to observe how the duo plays with Anouk Kruithof, Yvonne Lacet, There is a large group of photographers our belief in photography as a faithful reproduction of reality and with colour as an essential component of this. The photos seen in Still/Life are no longer ‘taken’ (as an imprint of reality), but are ‘made’ (staged and composed in their entirety). Subject and object converge and exist only in relation to each other. Whether the final result is purely a photo, a video or an installation, in all cases the form and the content have been entirely orchestrated by the creator. The photographers enter into relationships with other expressions of visual art in constructing their images, such as performance, video, installation and sculpture. Anne de Vries and Peggy Franck play an ingenious game with two–dimensionality and 3D, expanding their photos into the physical space. For them as well, the process and the experiment in the studio are of the utmost importance. Young talent has been a key focus in Foam’s exhibition policy since the museum was founded. The new gradu- ates showing their work in Foam 3h, exhibitions by young photographers already further along in their careers, the Foam Paul Huf Award (the annual prize for photographers under 35) and the yearly Talent edition of Foam Magazine are essential for the discovery “A laden brush, in depositing paint painting, certain words and phrases recur: and a tiny skeleton inside a glass dome, The photographic still life has come on the panel or canvas, hardly ‘holy’, ‘poetic’, ‘calm’, ‘meditative’. every object weighted with allegorical a long way since then, while essentially registers a sound, and how great is In still life painting, there is order and calm- meaning. Here, photography, for all its remaining – until relatively recently, the peace palpable in those great ness even in death. A human skull sits modernist thrust, is realist painting’s poor when conceptualism came into play – artists of stillness: Vermeer, at the centre of Harmen Steenwyk’s classic relation. The new, potentially revolutionary essentially the same. If I was asked, Chardin, Hammershoi.” 17th century still life, An Allegory of the medium has not yet realised its potential off the top of my head, to list the masters Vanities of Human Life, one of the greatest or its power, but remains tied to an older of the form, the names Roger Fenton, This quote is taken from Open City of the ‘Vanitas’ paintings that so en- realist tradition that it will soon threaten to Edward Steichen, Eugene Atget, (Faber & Faber, 2010), a long, discursive thralled the collective Calvinist imagination render obsolete. Paul Outerbridge, Edward Weston, novel in which the narrator walks around of post-Reformation Netherlands. In its earliest manifestations, the still Tina Modotti, Paul Strand, Josef Sudek, New York, meditating on, among other Bathed in a ray of opaque light, Steenwyk’s life photograph was literally an experiment Andre Kertesz, Irving Penn and things, mortality, culture, race, the discon- perfectly rendered skull is an example in capturing stillness. The long length of Robert Mapplethorpe would come to mind. nect edness of modern urban life and, of religious allegory writ large; an object time of an exposure meant that the subject For all of them, to one degree or briefly, the consolations of great art from that does not need much scholarly had to be fixed, inanimate, utterly still. another, the still life was a way of creating another older, seemingly simpler time. elucidation amidst an array of other more Stillness was a prerequisite, not just an images of arranged beauty that relied In art, as in life, stillness denotes peace. earthly things (a shell, a sword, a jar, end result. Duboscq’s Vanitas photograph heavily on pre–production: the setting up The profound sense of stillness that Cole’s silk fabric, books, musical instruments), is a study in shades of grey except for and lighting of a group of diverse or 21st century flaneur describes is palpable, all of which have been carefully chosen for the ghostly wash of opaque pink light that related inanimate objects. Within those im- not just within a painting by Vermeer their more coded metaphorical resonances. seems caught inside the dome. In its almost posed limitations, there was much or Chardin or Hammershoi (the stilled life), And yet, despite its stark message monochromatic aspect, it seems altogether room for mischief, experiment and but without it, too – in the space occupied (‘Do not store up for yourself treasures less ‘real’ in some ways than Steenwyck’s provocation, as Man Ray’s Surrealist still by the reverent viewer (stilled by art into on earth…’ Matthew 6:18), and its intention photorealist painting and exudes that lifes attest. In the 1930s, Outerbridge quiet contemplation). to provoke guilt or self-recrimination, strange sense of historical ‘thenness’ that made still life photographs that blurred The calmness that comes off a Vermeer Steenwyck’s skull painting is a work of old photographs often carry. the traditional boundaries between interior – or a ‘breakfast’ painting by supreme stillness. In its understated way, Ironically, though, early photographic the commercial – advertising, editorial Pieter Claesz or an ornate tableau of fruit it insists on a degree of silent reflection still lifes were perceived by the public commissions for interior decoration and vegetables by Willem Kalf – is tangible by the viewer.

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