David Campany’s ‘Out in the world: Still life photography’
David Campany discusses the relationship between art and commerce in this article and how photographers have become more experimental with the medium throughout the years. Beginning with the still life photograph- a genre which has always been considered to be inferior, Campany says commerce had its roots from the still life genre and this is evident through the advertisements we see printed on billboards, in catalogues that resemble the style of the earliest still life photographs, like Talbot’s fruit bowl for example.
As the art form went on to develop its modern artistic influence, many well known photographers in the early twentieth century were most commonly reportage based, portraiture based or advertising using the still life genre. Other photographers, like Man Ray however claimed the medium could be an art, and photographers since then have experimented with medium.
The still life genre has overtime been given recognition and has played a significant role in commerce. In this day and age, advertising ‘hijacks’ the truth/ the idea of natural, as companies need to sell their products. Karl Marx, a critique of political economy claimed the advertising image glosses over and obscures the real circumstances of the labour that produced it.
