At Hamburg Kennedy, Paul Vinet Mourns a Loss

THE DAILY PIC: The French photographer makes dad’s things stand for the man.

THE DAILY PIC (#1307): This huge gilded photo was made by the French artist Paul Vinet, and is now on view in his solo show at Hamburg Kennedy Photographs in New York. It’s part of a project in which Vinet photographed decades’ worth of his father’s accumulated junk, not long before Vinet Sr. died.

The objects gathered in this particular shot speak of a long-ago day at the beach, in an era when men wore hats unironically. The gilding that Vinet places all around his subject obviously turns a casual still life into a sacred icon, but I’m much more interested in the folding lounger: It’s empty,  just ready to receive the limp body of Christ from Raphael’s Deposition.

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