Margriet Smulders

The photographs of Margriet Smulders (*1955 Bussum, NL) give one of the topics in art history a contemporary interpretation. Inspired by Dutch still-life painting of the 17th century, she combines flowers, fruits, branches, glass, water, mirrors and draped fabrics to create opulent arrangements of which she then takes large-scale photographs using film. She does not digitally manipulate the images. Her use of colour, light and reflections results in highly imaginative visual worlds that evoke different moods and give the impression of breaking down the borders between fiction and reality. Besides beauty and splendour, her works are about vanitas, the baroque notion of the transience of all life on earth.