Documentary still life- books

   For ages people try to preserve history, attempts at conservation may slow down decay, but they can't stop it. Items that we save are usually, objects of special importance. Either sentimental like for example something that was left behind by our ancestors or historical carefully kept in museums. What is important most of all is the authenticity of those objects, the authentic emotions.

  Photography has this special power to record a moment, moment which in the minute that the photographer presses the shutter is change to become history. I looked at three photographers which projects are about relationships between the cultural heritage and the creations of contemporary culture. Each of these photographers wants to show us the importance of our cultural heritage, but every one of them has his or her own vision of doing that.

  Wijnanda Deroo
 Her photographs are as authentic as the places on them, she concentrates on small areas of the room almost like she wants us to concentrate on personalities of the owners. By looking at these images I feel like I can tell the story of some ones life, they are very straight forward. Deroo, doesn't move any objects in the rooms or play tricks with the light, she documents the places as she finds them. By photographing this way she creates a question in my head, will these objects have the same impact, atmosphere and authenticity if they will be displayed in a museum? No, because it is not just about an object, is more than that,  it's about people, about feelings, about tradition. Many of those places don't exist any more which shows us even more how important are those images for our cultural heritage.

  

  Mirjam de Zeeuw

 Mirjam says about her self ; "I'm not a photographer, I just use photography" (page 49) I think that she chose photography as a best medium to understand how important preservation of our historical heritage is. Her photographs are fragmental, even if she wants to show the whole process, she decides that showing just most important part of the reconstruction is more valuable. By looking at those images I understand that she wants us to appreciate the uniqueness of those objects, that reproductions, or in fact fakes very poorly measure up to what the real objects offer. Those images show the cultural preservation, which happens in the museums behind close doors of laboratories and how every object, whether it is a painting or a carpet, is carefully taken care of to slow down the decay. Zeeuw photographs are supposed  to remind us about irreplaceability of cultural heritage. Her work is about the passing of things, but more than that, it is about our passing by of things.

  Wout Berger 

 Bergers images are made from composing smaller images in to a collage, in fact six of them. Each one  is about something different; colonial history, shipping, painting, anatomy, typography and war, and at the same time all of them are about the same, all of them are collections. Looking at those images I can notice that some of them have been taken in museums, others more than likely on the streets. He almost tries to prove that we need more than one image to understand that important subjects like history and cultural heritage. Berger, like the other two photographers, is taking close ups, which have a big emphasis on the subject. Strong points of the collage is that it is made from lots of smaller images, in the same way like reality is made from different elements, and everyone of us will see it differently, but in fact there is just one reality.

So all of those photographers document our cultural heritage, all visually different but with the same impact on authenticity, like the experts in the museums are not interested if the painting is beautiful but if is genuine, if is painted by artist in his own hand, not by someone else, at some other time.