At first glance, a still life is just a beautiful arrangement: produce, flowers, objects frozen in time. But look closer, especially at the 17th-century Dutch still life paintings, and you’ll see something more: wealth, empire, mortality. These works were visual status symbols. Exotic fruits, imported pottery, and lavish spreads were as much about power and global reach as they were about aesthetics.
When our marketing manager visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in 2024, she was struck not just by the beauty of the Dutch masters’ work, but by the complicated history behind each brushstroke. The pomegranate, the porcelain vase, the tulip—none of them native to the Netherlands. They were imported. Desired. Symbols of status built on the back of global trade routes and colonial expansion.
So we asked ourselves: what would our version of still life food photography look like if it centered not wealth, but connection? Not empire, but community? What if instead of glorifying the exotic and unattainable, we celebrated what connects all of us: soil, seasons, and the people who grow our food?
Winter Still Life: A Story of Interdependence
Our first still life came together in winter, a season when North Carolina’s fields offer just a few hardy crops. To reflect this, we included organic produce grown across the U.S.—citrus from California, root vegetables from the Midwest, and leafy greens from the Southeast.
Each item in the composition tells a story of collaboration. Farmers, packers, drivers, and distributors all play a role in making fresh, organic food available even in the off-season. In this way, the still life mirrors the Dutch tradition of showcasing goods from around the world. But instead of emphasizing luxury, our arrangement highlights the interdependence that sustains our food system.
As a quiet nod to the symbolism often found in 17th-century Dutch still life paintings, we also included a dried sweet potato and a dried magnolia bloom. Dutch artists frequently used fading flowers or overripe fruit to reflect on mortality—the idea that all things, no matter how beautiful or bountiful, are temporary. Our version speaks to a similar truth: seasons shift, harvests come and go, but what endures is the cycle itself and the people who work within it.
Spring Still Life: A Celebration of Place
Come spring, our still life shifted. Suddenly, North Carolina’s soil was bursting with life. We created a composition using only local, organic produce—leafy kale, red radishes, sweet strawberries.
We included a tulip and a vase from Delft, Holland, a nod to Dutch history and artistry. But instead of empire, our spring still life honored what’s grown right here. It uplifts not just the beauty of food, but the hands that plant, tend, and harvest it.
This is art with dirt under its nails.
A New Kind of Still Life
In reimagining still life for today, we wanted to honor the tradition while sharing a different message. The Dutch gave us stunning paintings that focused on materialism, mortality, and power. They laid the foundation for this type of art so that we could focus on resilience, interdependence, and the unsung heroes of our food system—farmers, fieldworkers, and soil itself.
Yes, still life is about beauty. Beauty can hold different meanings for everyone. It can mean luxury, and it also can mean honesty. Seasonality. Care. It can mean celebrating the very ordinary things that sustain us all.
Our food system is complex. But within that complexity, there is also connection. That’s the story we want our still life images to tell.
