The artistic qualities of a fork

I think my most successful photo from my experiment was this photo of three forks and a spoon.

The class discussion today talked about how The Mezzanine turns the mundane, trivial, everyday consumer items into art by putting "a blank wall" around them--much like how a museum displays its art. 

By isolating the objects and talking about them in detail, Howie is forcing us to focus only on the object. He rants about straws, paper towels, and even garbage trucks. Somehow, he turns these commonplace items into objects of wonder and curiosity. Howie says that he wants to "set the escalator to the mezzanine against a clean mental background as something fine and worth my adult time to think about," and I think he succeeds in getting the reader to think more creatively about day to day life. 

This point of the book, and the discussion in class, reminded me of a photo experiment that I did last winter. 

I'm not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but at one point last year I really wanted to try out a homemade light box for my food blog that I was writing for nonfiction writing class. The goal was to make the food items look even more delicious by casting more light onto them, because usually well-lit subjects make a better picture. 

I found that taking pictures of the food was so much fun that I started grabbing things in the kitchen, and I found that when these trivial objects are placed on their own in the light box you suddenly see colors and shapes that you hadn't noticed before. And, now that I think about it, my use of the light box was similar to Howie's discovery of the rusted railroad spike in the well-swept garage. 

For example, the blue on the Earl Grey tea packet stands out in one picture, and so do the colors of the twisty straws in the next.

 Most of the time, when I make tea I don't even study the packet at all because I promptly discard it, but on it's own the packet is suddenly fascinating. I begin to notice that the packet is made of this papery plastic material. I also notice the shadows its crinkled shell casts, the fading color of dark blue and black on the design, and my ultimate betrayal of the "please tear here" instructions.

The twisty straws also become intriguing because they remind you of the swirly motion that occurs as you drink liquid through them. The white milk twists and turns, and your eyes cross as they look down your nose to examine the effect the twisty straw has on the drinking time of the liquid (only a few hundredths of a second more drinking time than using a regular straw). 

Howie would probably go into great detail about why and how twisty straws came into existence, but I'll save the extensive footnotes for another time. 

If you're interested here are some the shots that I came up with: