After All

Instead of the traditional allure of a meal awaiting an unseen viewer’s consumption, Laura Letinsky photographs the remains of the table so as to investigate the precarious relationships between ripeness and decay, delicacy and awkwardness, control and haphazardness, waste and plenitude, pleasure and sustenance. Dutch-Flemish and Italian still-life paintings – whose exacting beauty documented shifting social attitudes resulting from exploration, colonization, economics, and ideas about seeing as a kind of truth – are a major influence. In her photographs, remnants of daily sustenance and pleasure are examined "after the fact". Letinsky explores photography’s transformative quality, changing what is typically overlooked into something splendid in its resilience.