Nature Morte
Nature Morte is the first artistic collaboration between photographer Ruth Ward and Studio Omelette, a creative studio founded by Cécile Dumetier. During the height of the pandemic, Ward created a series of still life photographs, featuring discarded waste collected in the streets of East London.
The term Nature Morte is the French term for Still Life. The phrase literally translates into English as Dead Nature, an appropriate play on words that encompasses both the essence of the inspiration and the realisation of the images.
The series zeroes in on three iconic items: masks, gloves and paper cups. After two years of collecting, the images were presented in a fundraising exhibition at Dalston Curve Garden in spring 2023, culminating in a stylized reflection of a unique moment in time. Prints are sold through a dedicated website, with all benefits directly supporting the community garden in London’s Hackney borough.
In addition to posters and postcards advertising the show, Studio Omelette also produced an exhibition catalog. The blue of the catalog cover (which can also be seen on the website and the Instagram channel) is “a nod to the artificial colour of the masks and plastic gloves popping out in nature”. The designers opted for newsprint paper, in order “to give a continuity with the disposable items featured in our photographs”. Each chapter is introduced by copy written by Francesca Tenenbaum.
The typefaces used for the project are Production Type’s Cardinal and Dinamo’s ABC Favorit Mono. More specifically, the filigrane Italic style of Cardinal Fruit serves for the Nature Morte wordmark. The wider Cardinal Classic Mid (with extenders of moderate length) was used for text.
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