Delicacies!
Ron wrote in the introduction to his book Delicacies, ‘The food and related objects were chosen intuitively- deliberately for their personalness- but intuitively. (Friends, too, are often chosen this way)’. As a photographer, Ron wrote these words in March 1977. The book has seventy-five plates of black and white photos all beginning with the title “A still life with…” However, there are four exceptions to this found in the index in the back of the book. Plate 17 Making bread, Plate 23 Sunnyside Up, Plate 34 Dead Duck, and plate 58 Onion Wall. It makes one wonder what is the difference between a still life with and just the object described. Is it a more personal relationship? Is making bread so intimate and erotic it cannot claim to be a still life with? Or is a dead duck so violent it can only be seen as such, an animal murdered and hanging upside down. But then you wonder why the page next to it, plate 33 is called Still Life with a Rabbit but is also of a dead animal hanging from its foot to be consumed. Does Ron have a more personal relationship to a duck? Then we have Sunnyside up. Perhaps the possibility of rows of eggs cooking upright are a representation of lives never realized making it to cynical, to serious to be a still life with. Or lastly the wall of an Onion, Onion Wall. A vegetable, when cut, causes tears forever flowing from the eyes, a suffering so great you cannot escape it. I looked through this book cover to cover, in reverse, in order from start to finish, and randomly studding each plate. I don’t think I will ever find an answer but the more I looked the more interested I became in each of their personalness and the more I think that these 4 images represent a closer friend, a deeper thought, a reflection of Ron.
-Jen Fisher