Kevin Best photographs the past – or as close to it as is humanly possible to get. He painstakingly re-produces the images produced by Dutch painters of the 17th century.
Whilst eBay and museum shops provide some (authentic) props, Best will often arduously handcraft replicas of those he can’t otherwise source. Whilst his exacting and faithful reproductions of the paintings of the Dutch masters began as both homage and attempt to understand how they achieved their effects, it has grown into something much richer, and stranger, as Best’s own skills and understanding have grown.
His photographs, like the paintings that provide their models, are sensorial feasts evoking the smells, tastes and kinaesthetic “heft” of the objects therein. The sheer insistence on those most fleeting of sensations ensures that his images explore the same territory of mortality as the Dutch artists. Ars longa, vita brevis.
