“Vanity of Vanities, saith the preacher,
all is vanity”
Vanitas is a genre of art which uses symbolism to show the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death.
Five years of photographing the plants that inhabit our garden in Pasadena and I have accumulated thousands of shots. Because of focus stacking — the technique I use to reassemble and construct an image — not only do I have hundreds of final pieces that are sharp through and through, but I have also accumulated a vast library of depth and color mattes. This library is now fertile ground to create novel pieces with elements that were never intended to coexist. The results are familiar — I love to explore painters’ lighting techniques and compositions from different cultures and periods — yet they are the result of manipulations only made possible with the use of contemporary digital tools. Every element of these pieces was shot on camera to be then superimposed and matted with data from the focus stacks of others whose sources were also shot on camera.
All photographs are for sale. Please contact David directly by email for details and purchase inquiries.
