Image of inanimate objects. The quiet life of things. Bringing the still life to life. Practice for the little ones

Gianni Rodari and his Chippolino can be called a classic of "animating" objects. An outstanding project of our time is the program on the NTV channel "Culinary Stories". By means of cinema, and, more simply, by a moving picture, it is quite easy to evoke the necessary associations in the viewer. Still life is another matter. This is a static image of inanimate objects, we are not talking about movement here. Moreover, for the purity of the genre, it is extremely undesirable to add eyes, mouths, arms, legs to objects ... How can one animate the inanimate?

And now about how I fell ill with the "animation" of objects. Creative people usually say: “I can’t remember how it started…”. It all started with my acquaintance with the work of photographer Anatoly Kirillov from Samara. I liked his photographic work and asked him to talk about the technique of shooting using the "light brush". Thus began our correspondence and my correspondence distance learning. I shot almost all my subsequent still lifes with the help of a “light brush”. Briefly, this is a way of lighting, the essence of which is one flashlight with a narrow beam of light. When the camera is mounted on a tripod, sharpness is induced with the general light on, then in complete darkness each object is illuminated with a flashlight for 10 seconds or more. This way of setting the light has become especially popular recently, when multiple exposure was replaced by the addition of several takes with layers in a graphics editor (in one of the next issues of the magazine we will talk about the light brush in more detail. - Approx. ed.).
The idea to revive objects did not come immediately. Initially, there were various experiments with light, shooting techniques and staging. For example, this is how the work "Black Cherry" was born. In this work, I used one wax candle as a light source. I poured the cherries onto a sheet of whatman paper and placed them in a vertical "system" to obtain the effect of depth. The original photo was processed in a graphics editor: one red channel was taken and the contrast was increased.
In January 2004, I happened to see still lifes by artists Alexander Buganin from Ufa and Dmitry Mikhailov from Tomsk in the Alla Bulyanskaya Gallery.
I really liked how they depicted fruits, namely pears. So I decided to try shooting still lifes with pears. The most interesting in form seemed to me varieties "Duchess" and "Conference". Having bought pears at the nearest market, the very first night I started staged shooting. At night, in the kitchen, when the whole family was asleep, unaware of my nightly experiments, I composed fruit compositions on a stool. The first work worthy of the attention of the viewer, which opened the series, was "Portrait of the Duchess family". Under the influence of A. Buganin's painting "Letters to an Angel 7", I got the idea to build a panoramic composition that is not standard for a still life. I arranged seven pears in one row, placing them on a meter long piece of wood. The shot was intentionally panorama-shaped, and the fruits are positioned in different poses to enhance the rhythm and match the golden ratio lines.

In the process of drawing up a still life, I fell more and more in love with pears. I admired the variety of their forms, interesting, unique texture. Taking them off, I never ceased to be surprised at the photogenicity of these fruits! Their matte surface, like nothing else, conveyed the transitions of chiaroscuro, the richness of texture, shape and volume. The more I looked at pears, the more I became convinced that they were perfect for the role of a parody of people. They are just as diverse in their forms, have an amazing resemblance to the figure of a fat person: the same steep hips and narrow shoulders, the same beer belly and voluminous ass! And even each has its own character, like people. And sometimes they claim originality and individuality. So pears became my favorite characters in creating a whole series of photographs.
The next work "Portrait of the Duchess and a girl playing with a wheel" was born. In this production, the main task for me was to convey the texture and shape of the pears as much as possible, as well as in the conditions of compressed space and perspective, to evoke a sense of volume and depth in the viewer. The idea was inspired by the painting by D. Mikhailov "Pear, quince, inkwell". In the process of working on my still life, I came up with a name for it. So I came up with the idea to bring the pears to life and make a series of photographs that tell about the Duchess family as if it were an ordinary human family. Everything happened spontaneously, at the level of improvisation, and then grew into a long-term hobby.
From the very beginning, I decided to abandon the banal puppet theater with sewing on button eyes, attaching wire arms and match legs.
I still had a sufficient number of means of animating any object at my disposal. The main one is form. If you give free rein to your imagination, do not set boundaries for the imagination, then you can very successfully use light and shadow, texture, composition and color. More precisely, the lack of color.
Initially, I ran into the problem of suppressing and removing colored digital noise. A simple solution came by itself: no color - no noise! The original was translated by the channel mixer into monochrome. The black and white image was then toned to sepia. Thus, I was able to kill a whole boat of hares at once! Removed the hated colored noise, turning it into a nice grainy look. He added expressiveness to the texture and focused the viewer's attention on the shape of the pears, since the color distracted from the very essence: the character and "soul" of the object-character, which was expressed mainly through its shape. I also created the most suitable stylization of still lifes for photographs of the beginning of the last century or for silent films. In fact, the entire series with pears is a silent performance or genre still life.
After such inferences, I proceeded to create a humorous mise-en-scène “How Mr. Duchesse flirted with Mrs. Duchesse. He really wanted to go fishing.
Everything here was like in the theater. First, the idea for the scene was born. Then I selected props and costumes. Chose the main characters. Thought out the composition. In the process of shooting, I improvised with the light, initially deciding to achieve the effect of the rays of the morning sun falling on the scene. To convey the atmosphere of lightness and morning coolness, I draped the background with a gauze bandage. Fruit and other objects were illuminated by a flashlight - each separately. The background and gauze were illuminated with a remote flash mounted parallel to the back. Spinners and knitting needles played the role of props, supporting the semantic part. Thus, a scene familiar to everyone was staged when the husband flirts with his wife and tries in every possible way to obtain permission to go fishing.
My hobby found understanding among relatives, which could not be said about the rest. Sometimes it came to very ambiguous situations. How do you usually buy fruits in the market? “Please weigh me a kilo of pears. Just put the good ones on the table for me,” you say. But I, before I buy pears, arrange a real casting. For several minutes I dig in the box, choosing the most suitable character for the next production. As a result, instead of a kilogram, after a long and thorough examination, I buy only 2-3 fruits. Of course, these manipulations cause, to put it mildly, great surprise, and sometimes even indignation of fruit sellers. I often had to change the location of the casting, so as not to increase their desire to call "03".
The next task for me was to minimize the objects in the frame. So that unnecessary details do not distract the viewer and do not scatter his attention.
The most successful, in my opinion, can be called the work "Grieving".

Through ordinary objects, in this case - fruits, I managed to convey emotions and mood. The photo turned out to be tragicomic. Despite the fact that only four ordinary pears and a candle are visible in the photo, their location, composition, light and long shadows create an atmosphere of mystery and sorrow, and the picture is no longer perceived as an ordinary still life.
This photo was not created using a graphic editor. The light of a candle, the role of which was played by a burning match, was filling, and the light of a small flashlight became drawing. Next, I decided to make the scene dynamic. Again with the help of the main characters - pears. Several performances were made. The task turned out to be very difficult. More successfully, I managed to convey the tension and dynamics in the work based on the song of the same name by V. Vysotsky "If a friend suddenly turned out to be ...". The background was a piece of black leatherette. The scene is simple: Climbers (or hikers) pull their comrade out of the abyss. No editing, no graphical editor intervention. Pears, clothesline, tripod camera, flashlight.
With good humor and a share of self-irony in my nightly "Theater of Things" the production of "The Photographer" was made. In this still life, I tried to convey the spirit of the times, when the first Soviet rangefinder camera "Zorkiy" was no less popular than digital compact cameras today.
Once I was lucky to find one amazing among the pears. Her shape just perfectly matched the shape of the lower part of the female body. On the same evening, the work in the nude style "My Favorite Model" was made, which subsequently caused a lot of controversy and heated discussions on the pages of the club.foto.ru Internet forum.
The work "School friends ten years later" immediately followed. It uses two large mother pears and their children, small wild pears. The plot was conceived as sadly ironic: the years go by, over the years there are more worries, more children, and the figure grows fat and takes on the shape of a pear.
Small wild pears have found their way into yet another production: Gulliver. The role of Gulliver is played by a small pumpkin. After using it, I thought about animating other fruits and vegetables.
If you can revive an object, then you can kill it. As a screenwriter, director, lighting engineer and cameraman in one person, I had complete freedom actions and could easily stage any plot in his "Theater of Things". Reflecting on the fact that in our life there is not only joy, but also suffering, I decided to show one of the problems of our reality in my production of "The Sect". The tragedy and torment of sectarians who find themselves in the power of fanatics and swindlers are shown in this still life. Many did not like the way I pierced the pears with knitting needles, but what to do - “ce la vie” ...
In the country garden, I caught the eye of the old huge seed cucumbers. I picked one of them up from the garden and was surprised to discover a whole geographical map on its surface. Small veins, cracks, a light brown background and a luxurious yellow diverse pattern inspired me for the next experiment. I found a young small cucumber on the same bed and put them side by side. The plot was born instantly: old and young, seasoned and trainee, mature and green. It remains to find a "studio" in the village for staging a still life. It became a bathhouse, the lower shelf played the role of a photo table, and several birch poles became the scenery. I always had a tripod and a flashlight with me. There was one problem left: how to make the cucumbers stand upright. I had to cheat a little. I put them on several matches, which I then removed from the picture in a graphic editor. You can see the result below. On the same day, in the village, a still life "Gypsies were driving ..." was put up. A bright zucchini and scarlet tomatoes became the heroes of the new scene. The red color of the tomatoes reminded me of the scarlet shirts of the gypsies. To give the action dynamism, a squash of a certain shape was chosen, and the tomatoes were positioned as if they were riding on it.
Look around - there are so many interesting objects around us. In each of them, if you look closely, you can see the hidden potential. All of them are similar to something, can evoke certain emotions or play the right role. I want to wish all readers to fantasize more, develop their imagination and, at least sometimes, return to their childhood. May inspiration never leave you!

Types and genres of fine art
some theory​

Types of fine arts:

• Architecture
• Painting
• Graphics
• Sculpture
• Arts and Crafts
• Theatrical and decorative art
• Design

Fine art genres:

Portrait(portrait - French older - portraire - means to depict) - this is a type of fine art dedicated to depicting a certain person or group of people - an outwardly individually similar display of a person on canvas or paper, with the aim of presenting it to others, showing character, inner world, life the value of the picture.

Scenery(French Paysage, from pays - country, area), in painting and photography - a type of picture depicting nature or any area (forest, field, mountains, grove, village, city). Landscape (French paysage, from pays - country, locality) is a genre of fine art in which the main subject of the image is the area, natural or man-transformed nature: urban and rural landscapes, views of cities, buildings.

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Still life(French nature morte - lit. "dead nature") - the image of inanimate objects in the visual arts, in contrast to portrait, genre, historical and landscape themes.

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historical genre works of art that reflect real historical characters or events.

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mythological genre(from Gr. muthos - legend) - a genre of fine art dedicated to events and heroes, about which the myths of ancient peoples tell. All peoples of the world have myths, legends, traditions, and they constitute the most important source of artistic creativity.

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Battle genre works of art that reflect military episodes. An artist who writes on battle themes is called a battle painter.

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household genre works that reflect episodes from the daily life of people.

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Marina works of art depicting the sea. An artist who paints the sea is called a marine painter.

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Animal genre works of art depicting animals.

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Composition(Latin compositio - compilation, composition) - compilation, connection, combination of various parts into a single whole in accordance with an idea. In the visual arts, composition is the construction of a work of art, due to its content, character and purpose, the need to convey the main idea, the idea of ​​the work most clearly and convincingly.

What types and genres of fine art do you like? ​

It seems that it is easy to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects to the indecent: it's like a game of life and inanimate. But those who are guided by this principle are very much mistaken. Animation, as well as inanimateness, respectively, is a separate category in the characteristic that has nothing to do with the external features of some object. Here's how to explain the fact that, according to the rules, the word "corpse" is considered inanimate, and "dead" - animated? Act randomly? In no case! We'll figure out.

For the little ones

Let's start with the very basics. Animate and inanimate objects answer different questions - "who" and "what" respectively. It can be said that the formulation of the question is the most primitive, albeit very unreliable, way of defining this category. Usually children are introduced to him in the first or second grade. In order to practice this method, you can fill in the gaps with the students in the following text:

« In sleepy oblivion flows great (what?). Around (what?) and (what?). (Who?) Slowly moved the skis, shook off (what?) Hats from the ears. (Who?) quickly made a hole, and began (what?). Soon he pulled out a huge (who?). His mirror (what?) shone brightly in the sun". Words to be inserted: ice, scales, fisherman, frost, river, carp, snow, fishing. One word is repeated twice.

Grammar explanation

But it's worth moving on, right? How to determine whether an animate or inanimate object is based on rules, and not on intuition? The difference between these two categories lies in the different case forms of the nouns. Inanimate nouns have the same nominative and plural form, while animate nouns have the same genitive and accusative in the same number. Of course, it will be much easier to understand specific examples.

We take the noun cat". We put it in the plural "cats" and begin to decline: nominative - " cats”, genitive - “ cats", accusative -" cats"- as you can see, the forms of the genitive and accusative cases coincide. Whereas for the noun table”, which, to define this category, becomes “ tables» when declining « tables-tables-tables» the accusative and

Thus, the rule allows to separate an animate and inanimate object only when they are put in the plural and the subsequent declension. And then, already by the coincidence of case forms, this category is determined.

Exceptions

But, as you know, there are very few rules in Russian that do not have any exceptions. So, it is sometimes possible to separate animate and inanimate objects logically. Yes, all living beings will be animate, but at the same time, mythical creatures belong to the same category ( goblin-goblin-goblin-goblin) and toy names ( matryoshka-matryoshka-matryoshka) - here you can still find a logical explanation. As well as card and chess suit-pieces ( spades, spades, pawns, pawns, pawns), which even in their forms do not fit into this category.

Move on. Inanimate nouns, in turn, include large groups of people ( crowd-crowd-crowd) and some living organisms ( embryos-embryos-embryos; germs-germs-microbes) - it is impossible to explain this phenomenon, you just have to accept and remember.

More difficulties

I would also like to add that animate and inanimate objects in the grammatical sense have their own characteristics. So, for example, for animate masculine nouns, the forms of the genitive and accusative cases coincide and in the singular: Anton-Anton-Anton, accountant-accountant-accountant, however, this phenomenon is observed only in nouns of the second declension (compare: Dima-Dima-Dima, although it is also an animate masculine noun). So, in principle, this pattern can be used as another simple, albeit not very well-known, way to determine the category of animation in nouns.

I want to confuse

It is worth noting that in Russian there is an image of an inanimate object as animated. This is usually associated with the use of the word as an analogy to a living being: There is a mattress in the barn - Yes, the mattress is weak-willed! or Great and mighty is the Russian language! - This language (= captive) will tell us everything.

Exactly the same phenomenon occurs with the use of animate nouns as inanimate ones: A kite flies in the blue sky; The fighter went down. Here the category of animation and inanimateness is determined based on the semantic content of the noun.

It is worth noting that, despite all the requirements of teachers to use the rules, most of the students continue to rely on intuition. As the above examples show, inner instinct is not always a reliable assistant in matters of philology. We can definitely say that the names of professions, the names of people by family affiliation, nationality and other groups will always be animated, and the names of animals can also be included here. By the way, among animate nouns, according to some researchers, there are only masculine and feminine words, while the neuter gender is already inanimate, like all names of objects of nature and other objects.

Practice for the little ones

Now that we have figured out how to distinguish one category of nouns from another, it is worth summarizing all of the above. Animate and inanimate objects for preschoolers, who still have no idea what cases are, differ in terms of “who” and “what”, respectively. For practice, you can play with the kids in “living-non-living”, where the word is called, and the child must determine what this object is.

Or another interesting task for younger students is to offer a number of animate nouns that can be turned into inanimate ones by replacing one letter: fox (linden), goat (spit), heron (drop).

I would like to finish the article on how to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects by saying that, no matter how simple this topic may seem, it is better not to tempt fate and not act at random, trusting intuition. A minute spent checking the category of a noun can sometimes change the way you think about it. So spare no effort and practice in the great and mighty Russian language.