Modern Groceries (2009)
Photographer Stephanie Dean stages modern food items on a classic stage, and captures them with the dramatic light of Dutch still life paintings. She includes details that indicate a modern consumer culture—the plastic packaging on a head of lettuce, the stickers on produce, the protective padding on fruit—to draw our attention to the increasing distance between garden and table, and to remind us of how precious an apple once was. "In many cases, the price a [17th century Dutch] buyer would have paid for a painting would be considerably less than that he would have had to pay for all the items within the paintings, which often included expensive and exotic items and foods." Today, an orange is easy to come by, but that's not to say it doesn't deserve the honor of a still life.
