Flowervases by Martin Klimas

About the project:

Flawlessly arranged flower vases are shot by steel balls and captured at the moment of their destruction. When hit by the projectiles, glass vases shatter, and ceramic and stoneware vases burst into large fragments. What interests Klimas is not so much the moment of impact as the transformation is taking place in one seven-thousandth of a second. While the top half of the photograph remains poised in an absolutely harmonious still life, utter chaos has erupted below. The contrast of motionless and top speed explodes the triteness of the subject. The simultaneous presence of two distinct states and the improbable serenity of the pictures is positively spellbinding.

Flower Studies by Bryan Warakomski “explores the fragile state of nature exploring life and death, beauty and destruction”.

Blow Up is a series of large-scale photographs of exploding floral arrangements by Ori Gersht. They are based upon a 19th Century still-life painting by Henri Fantin-Latour.

About the project:

Flowers, which often symbolise peace, become victims of brutal terror, revealing an uneasy beauty in destruction. This tension that exists between violence and beauty, destruction and creation is enhanced by the fruitful collision of the age-old need to capture “reality” and the potential of photography to question what that actually means. The authority of photography in relation to objective truth has been shattered, but new possibilities to experience reality in a more complex and challenging manner have arisen.

Usually explosions are thought of as action movie fodder, but Geoffrey H. Short has managed to turn them into high art in his photo series Towards Another Theory. Pieces from this project exploring the relationship between terror and the sublime can be seen at the Paris Chic Art Fair until October 24.