While history painting is constructed around narrative, still life is the world minus its narratives or, better, the world minus its capacity for generating narrative interest. To narrate is to name what is unique: the singular actions of individual persons. And narrative works hard to explain why any particular story is worth narrating – because the actions in the story are heroic or wonderful, or frightening or ignoble, or cautionary or instructive.
The whole principle of story-telling is jeopardized or paralyzed by the hearer’s objection: ‘so what?’ But still life loves the ‘so what?’ It exactly breaks with the narrative’s scale of human importance.
Bryson, Norman. Looking At The Overlooked
SO WHAT is concept conceived by the cutting edge London based contemporary photography Doomed Gallery, in collaboration with Fresh From Poland showing at i! Gallery in Krakow. SO WHAT premiered in London November 2015 at Doomed Gallery, where it was a raging success.
