Robert Calafiore | Still Lifes

Robert Calafiore employs a hand-built pinhole camera to create large-scale, one-of-a-kind Chromogenic prints. The primary subject matter, an impressive collection of decorative glassware inherited from his family, is assembled by stacking, shelving, and balancing pieces into a single tableau within a larger construction. It is then transformed by the unique recording characteristics of the camera’s wide angle, the extended exposure, and the light sensitive paper’s recording abilities. Calafiore manipulates the still life to control the results; altering the saturation, color, density, and translucency of certain areas of the arrangement. His interest in process, traditional materials, and the reaction between light and chemistry, as well as the personal and universal stories told through every day objects, drives the work in his studio practice. Elevating the ordinary to the extraordinary and the everyday to a magical place remains a primary motivator. No digital tools are ever used. Reflecting on the endless flood and speed of changing technology, Calafiore steps back and invests in prolonged experimentation, investigation, and hands-on making that all speak to a change in how we use our bodies and in the way we all see, interpret, and react to the world around us, given the on-going digital revolution.