Foto Relevance is thrilled to announce Fabled Flora, a group exhibition blooming with lush still life works from contemporary photographers Yelena Strokin, Robert Langham III, Claire Rosen, and Julia McLaurin. United by a love of precise compositions and delicate light, curated selections from these artists invoke a modern revival of traditional still life scenes. All are invited to join in this visual reprieve of storied blooms and meticulously-orchestrated symbolism. Fabled Flora features brand new works from longtime gallery artists Langham, Rosen, and McLaurin, and marks Strokin's Foto Relevance debut.
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Introduction
From the commentary "Still Life Stories: Fabled Flora" by Geoffrey C. KoslovA still life, whether a painting, photograph or a multimedia creation, brings to mind an assembly of flowers, bowls, bottles and other objects, natural or man-made, arranged on some type of table surface. What constitutes a still life is broad and flexible with no defined rules. We think we will know it when we see it, to paraphrase an expression. With that in mind, a more serious still life work goes beyond a random assemblage of objects. It is a directed purposeful creation that convey messages through a selection of objects imbued with symbolism from custom or religious association. Looking at the still life photography of Claire Rosen, Yelena Strokin, Robert Langham III, and Julia McLaurin in the exhibition Fabled Flora, we examine four different approaches to this art genre that span centuries of creative effort.
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Yelena Strokin
Yelena Strokin’s still life settings call forth an elegant beauty reminiscent of 17th century Flemish paintings. In her series Off White, the artist augments this beloved, age-old style with her own monochromatic twist, capturing the transient subtleties in tone that natural light imparts on assemblages of white porcelain dishware.
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Elegant in their minimalism, Yelena Strokin's compositions include subtle details that imbue the works with deeper meaning. In "Off White 7" (right), Strokin's deliberate choice and juxtaposition of two apples bear a significance grounded in the origin stories for each piece of fruit. While seemingly perfect, the red apple comes from a typical grocery store—meaning that its immaculate appearance can be attributed to a life of wax and pesticides. In contrast, the green apple comes from a more natural journey, harvested straight from the artist's garden. While homelier than its counterpart, the green apple is comprised of, in the artist's own words, "love and sunshine."
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"As a day goes by and the sun does the circle of the day from east to the west, the light changes and brings an infinite palette of white. [...] White is a traditional color worn by brides in the western world and some other countries, but in China and parts of Africa, white is the color of mourning. The egg is a symbol of the birth, but a white skull represents death.
There are hundreds of shades of white in nature, but does pure white really exist? Off White is about looking at everyday objects and seeing the beauty in each of them under a different light."
—Yelena Strokin
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Claire Rosen
Invoking a similar appreciation for Baroque-era imagery, selections from Claire Rosen’s series Persephone’s Feast envelop viewers in an indulgent quietude. Each scene serves as a rich meditation on ephemeral objects—fruits that will inevitably spoil, flowers set to wilt.
Created during a time when the cyclical proliferation and consumption of attention-grabbing media are inherent in our everyday lives, Persephone’s Feast implores us to pause and hold still—even if just for a moment.
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In “Rattlesnake and Tulips" (left), Rosen carefully crafts a visual story referencing symbols that have been prevalent all throughout human mythology and the canon of art history. According to the artist:
- The tulip, one of the first flowers to welcome us out of the darkness of winter each spring, lives by the rhythms of the sun, always stretching towards the light and wilting in the darkness. Light and darkness are ubiquitous in religious morality as representatives of good and evil, of the divine and the demonic.
- Like the tulip, the Cecropia moths, mysterious nocturnal beauties, fly through the night and are drawn to any illumination in the darkness, as in the well-worn adage a ‘moth to a flame.'
- Snakes are powerful creative symbols, associated with deep, intrinsic wisdom. They bring the light of knowledge, and the darkness of the fall from grace. They stand as symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing.
- On the opposite corner of the frame, the Stag Beetle (Lucanas Cervus) appears, commonly used in still lives to depict Christ.
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"The realities of our digital world have made the core message embedded in the still life more relevant than ever. This series of still life imagery follows in the footsteps of the masters of the Baroque period, harnessing the symbolism of objects to illustrate the fleeting quality of time and the transience of life. These compositions focus on light, color, texture, and atmosphere, and are a stark contrast to the saturated, high-volume of our fast-paced modern life. Viewers are invited to meditate on the dignity, beauty, and purpose in each object, all of which evoke one essential point. This too shall pass."
—Claire Rosen
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Robert Langham III
With a penchant for crafting an artistic record of the spaces in which we dwell, Robert Langham III and his silver gelatin prints speak of a certain kind of magic to be found in nature. Ranging from sunflowers blossoming at daybreak to dogwood leaves and magnolia blossoms poised in gravity-defying configurations, the artist’s images imbue a reverence for the environment and its wealth of stories.
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Langham works with black and white film and traditional techniques of a wet darkroom to create his prints. Without the distraction of color, viewers are focused on this unusual embrace of beauty in nature—as exemplified by "Triple Magnolias" (right). In art and literature, magnolias may represent longevity, perseverance, love, and beauty. The arm which supports the blooms in "Triple Magnolias" is, in turn, supported on a surface covered with an old, torn cloth. This modesty runs contrary to what we might expect of a more conventional still life, but it forces us to view and appreciate the flowers. It is as if we are being told to simply embrace nature for what it is, and that we do not need the support of wealth and luxury to carry our enjoyment.
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“Every day in June at sunrise I took a bag of Hasselblad gear and a ladder and went around the corner to photograph sunflowers. I wanted to photograph them as they changed and watch myself as I changed under a sustained effort. Things did change, every day bringing new growth in flowers and new ideas about how to photograph them. At a glance, they look like straight photography, but nearly every photograph is either a double exposure, used reflectors, shadows, or light modification in the image. Sunflowers are heliotropic—they turn toward the sun. I photographed them as the sun rose and shone directly on their faces."
—Robert Langham
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Julia McLaurin
Adding in a touch of pop art influence, Julia McLaurin’s domestic tablescape installations embody an organized chaos that challenges the conventions of still life. In a manner similar to how 20th century artists reinterpreted the style of 17th century still life painters, McLaurin spins the genre of her predecessors with a unique, contemporary flair. In her works, typical still life fare is replaced with unexpected items such as sardines and duct tape—an act which transforms a classical way of thinking about materiality into something brand new.
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Everything about McLaurin’s work sheds tradition and traditional expectation. There are three dominant motifs in "The Silver Lining is Duct Tape" (details shown left): the colors silver and blue, fish, and duct tape.
- Color is as much a part of the fable in a still life as the objects themselves. Silver conveys a message of peace and serenity. McLaurin also nods to shades of blue throughout her image: across the table, in the background, in the sky and cloud labeled bottle set in the center of the frame. Blue conveys not only peace and calm, but also heaven and spirituality; or, more darkly in some cultures, defeat and trouble.
- Fish, in turn, are often taken as a symbol of religious life and belief. All of the fish in McLaurin's work are out of the water, however. We see them canned, dead, and ready to be consumed. If water itself represents life, then perhaps fish positioned out of water may suggest that our spirituality is out of sync, or that religious tradition is being challenged. Religion has been a part of still lifes for centuries, making it a worthy lens through which to approach the genre.
- Lastly, duct tape is a modern invention meant to hold together things that are broken or in need of rebinding. In McLaurin's image, few objects seem elegant, expensive or valuable except for an elegant tea serving piece in the lower right corner. This seemingly highbrow item contrasts with its colloquial counterparts: unlabeled silver cans, household scissors, and, of course, objects held with duct tape.
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Artist Bios
Upon seeing YELENA STROKIN’s images for the first time, the viewer can’t help but be captured by their elegant, Old World beauty. The glowing, Caravaggioesque light that defines her work imparts a jewel-like quality to glass and fruits. Bold colors of produce, flowers, butterflies and European antiques set against a rich background are arranged in carefully crafted compositions that recall the old Masters of the Flemish style of painting from the 17th century. Vegetables seen through Yelena’s lens, are luxurious pieces of sculpture. Sumptuous textures, whether the shimmer of fine fabric, the luminosity of fine porcelain and old silver or the earthiness of rough wood add strength and richness to her images.
Yelena was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, has traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia and now makes her home in Bucks County Pennsylvania. She is a trained chef and has formally studied design and photography. Her love of classical, European art and antiques, her appreciation of the natural beauty of objects from the fields and woods near her home as well as country breads, fruits and vegetables from her kitchen and garden have all found expression and harmonious life in her artwork.
Whether formal and delicate or simple and rustic, Yelena’s exquisitely crafted work possesses a timeless quality that transcends culture and continents to add graciousness and beauty to any setting. Her work is published in many American as well as in European magazines (Burda Food: Sweet Dreams (Germany), Magazine Freundin: Donna (Germany), Cigar Aficionado (US), GENTE (Italy), Bucks Life (US), Home & Table (US) and more). Yelena’s work has been exhibited in local and metropolitan galleries.
CLAIRE ROSEN is an award-winning artist whose elaborate constructions often feature anthropomorphic animals, archetypal heroines, or symbolic still-lives evoking the aesthetics of classical painting influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and referencing the Victorian Era. The transportive images captivate with a fascination of the natural world and ideals of beauty.
Rosen has twice earned a place on Forbes “30 under 30” list for Art & Design and her work has received recognition from Aesthetica Art Prize, Communication Arts, IPA, Graphis, PDN, Photo Annual, People’s Choice Photoville Fence, Photolucida Critical Mass, Prix de la Photographie and Sony World Awards. Her work has been featured in Complex Art+Design, Creative Quarterly Journal, Der Greif, Direct Art, Faded + Blurred, Fast & Co, featureShoot, The Guardian UK Observer, Hi Fructose Magazine, Juxtapoz Magazine, NPR Weekend Edition, National Geographic Proof, PDN, Refinery29, Slate Magazine, The Washington Post Insights, and The World Photography Organization.
Rosen’s work has been exhibited worldwide, from New York to Seoul, and can be found in a number of private and public collections. Her first solo museum show was at SCAD Savannah Museum of Art in Georgia (2013) and her work has been included in juried and group shows at Annenberg Space for Photography, Aperture Gallery, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Consensus, MOPLA, PhotoPlace Gallery, with five consecutive years on the Photoville Fence in Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Calgary, Houston & Santa Fe. Rosen graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2006 and Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 2003.
ROBERT LANGHAM lives in Tyler, Texas, in the same brick-street neighborhood where he was raised. Until recently, he worked in the same darkroom at The Tyler Junior College where he has taught for 40 years. As an assistant at the Ansel Adams studios in Yosemite, Langham honed his skill at interpreting landscape imagery as expressed in his “Shiprock, New Mexico” images. Though he teaches digital photography and the use of photoshop, which he uses for commercial work, his personal artwork is done on film, using large format cameras and a traditional “wet” darkroom.
Langham is also very much a naturalist and environmentalist. His hometown, Tyler, is in the Blackfork Creek watershed, high in the Neches River drainage. His “Blackfork Bestiary” series (a bestiary is an ancient scientific catalog of animals) is a portfolio of live animals and insects from this Blackfork Creek ecosystem, are photographed in a very non-traditional manner and composition. All these critters (from black-widow spiders and poisonous snakes to possums and frogs) are then safely released back into nature. Nor is Langham afraid to experiment with staging non-traditional photographic subjects. In his “still-life” work, “Magic and Logic,” he creates what he refers to as a “kinetic still life.” He reinterprets what we think of as a traditional still life work with movement and fiction done in camera without post-processing trickery. “Magic & Logic” reflects how he worships the mystery of dreams and ideas that find their way into a tangible creation. His work is in several museums, including The Harry Ransom Center, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The Museum of Southeast Texas at Beaumont.
JULIA MCLAURIN was born in 1981 to Polish immigrant parents. From a young age, McLaurin grew up in Houston, Texas. Her upbringing straddled a life in post-war communist Europe and a growing up in America, which influenced her art later in life. At home, her parents spoke Polish, so she became bilingual and multi-cultural. Her summer vacations were uniquely spent in summer camps in both pre and post Communist Poland, as well as time in Warsaw. Growing up she rode, trained and competed in show horses and jumpers, both in the U.S. and Europe. All the while, she was also challenged by family entrenched in old-world religious beliefs that contrasted with a greater freedom of thought in America. The contrast of life in Pre and Post Communist Poland, and life in the United States, early on, molded a perception of government and leadership. Art was fully part of her family life. Both grandmothers were architects in Europe, and her mother, who was also trained in architecture in the U.S., nurtured her life long study of print-making and sculpture, primarily at the Glassell School of Art in Houston. Her father practiced medicine. McLaurin’s path into photography was indirect. Despite obtaining an undergraduate and Masters in Psychology and Biology, McLaurin found herself drawn back to art and visual expression. In 2010 she opened the Srenka (“Mermaid” in Polish, and the symbol for Warsaw) Photography Studio with both of her sisters. McLaurin began experimenting with photomontage, enhanced by her early training in 4-color printing processes. Today, she is a full-time artist and photographer. McLaurin, her husband and children still call Houston home.
