Mixing her fascination with Renaissance paintings and U.S. Fast Food Culture, German photographer Rebecca Rütten came up with her Contemporary Pieces series. The series highlights our unhealthy habits, as visually presented in a canvas filled with humor and the added ingredient of Renaissance eroticism.
© Rebecca Rütten
”I became enamored with the eroticism, presentation and charisma of paintings from the Renaissance Period. In the Late Renaissance, Italian and Dutch painters dealt with the middle and lower classes. In my opinion, Fast Food Culture represents these two social classes in the U.S. today. To eat healthy is expensive. However, one can buy large amounts of food at a fast food restaurant for a comparatively low price.” explains Rebecca on her website.
After spending time leafing through various reading materials about the Renaissance at the University Library, Rebecca became riveted with the works of Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who uses the services of ‘laborers, gypsies and prostitutes’ to model for his portraits, thus combining a “realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting.”
© Rebecca Rütten
All of these elements of Caravaggio’s style and the Renaissance influence gave Rebecca a creative juice to conceptualize her own twist and come up with this inventive idea for a photography series. “I asked friends to model for me and recreate the poses of the people in the paintings, with the new touches that I added. I like the fact that my friends in these photographs have tattoos and piercings. It underlines the concept that they are ‘Children of the Modern Age,’ having been brought up in the changing America, often defined by the culture of Fast Food.”
For more about the Renaissance period and its influence to modern photography, check out the latest print issue of Resource Magazine—available online and in Barnes and Noble.
© Rebecca Rütten
© Rebecca Rütten
© Rebecca Rütten
© Rebecca Rütten
© Rebecca Rütten
© Rebecca Rütten
View more of Rebecca Rütten’s work on her website.