Laura Letinsky's elegiac photographs of detritus on a table-top are both elegantly prosaic and art historically resonant in their reference to Dutch vanitas still life painting of the Seventeenth Century.
This dialogue with painting is an important aspect Letinsky's photographs. As the artist has explained:
"It's so important for me that the photographs hover between being painterly - in the sense of light, colour, composition and plasticity - and being insistently photographic. They're photographs on photographic paper; they're made with the camera, they aren't digital effects. I'm really interested in the plasticity of photography and the way one reads it - like 'How can that be possible? That must be digital!' But no, it's not digital. Photography is like painting; it's an incredibly plastic medium."
Ranging from domestic setting to studio staging, Letinsky's still lifes are both everyday and infused with significance. Lyrical and formal, the subjects are dissolved by light, often set off against white walls and table cloths.