Still Life (Waste) - Discarded Objects as Contemporary Vanitas

A tied bin bag, pale blue and half transparent, on a wooden table. Around it: a dented can lying on its side, three bottles still standing, a plastic one crushed and on its back, shards of glass, scraps of paper. The background is almost black. The light comes from the front and slightly above, and stops on the bag.

I built the scene the way a seventeenth-century still life is built, objects arranged on a table, deep shadow behind, one source of light. Then I put in it what we throw away.

The bag is the tallest thing in the picture and the one that catches the most light. That was the point. It is the object we tie up and carry out of the house so as not to see it, and here it stands in the middle, lit like the fruit and the silver in the paintings I was looking at.

Those paintings had a name for this: Vanitas. Beautiful things arranged on a table, and the understanding that none of it would last. What I have arranged does not go away. The plastic in this picture will outlive everyone who looks at it.

The images in this series are made with the help of Artificial Intelligence. I decide the objects, the arrangement and the light, then work on the result until it holds.