“Still Life – The Pleasure of Stopping Time” surveys the manners in which photographers have explored and refreshed the great traditional genre from early in the twentieth century to innovative practices of today. Within photography, still lives have served as both conventional and experimental forms across many periods of significant aesthetic and technological change. By using straightforward as well as latent symbolism such as the motif of memento mori, or the impermanence of life, the camera came to be regarded as more than a straight recorder of objects. It came to express the ambiguous nature of the world and the individual’s role in perceiving it. Considering the amount of control exerted over still life arrangements, photographers would create deeply personal compositions. Modernists, as well as pioneers of twentieth century photography, would experiment with elements of pure form, arrangement, and lighting in order to create an aesthetic emotional response within the artist and the viewer.

Olivier Richon’s color work that has preoccupied him since the 1980s focuses on staged portraits of animals and still lives, subjects that recall the classical allegorical tradition yet confuse conventional meanings. Richon often references Old Masters through his highly adept understanding of perspective, composition, and chiaroscuro lighting while also employing elements such as draped material that recall traditional still life painting. Approaching from a painterly and occasionally surreal direction, Richon’s photographs appear to imply highly specific meanings but resist simple interpretation.