When I received Vice Magazine’s 2010 Photo Issue, the first word that came to mind was vis­ceral. The cover itself is a photo of rot­ting fruit, a ref­er­ence to Dutch still life paint­ing from the 15th and 16th cen­turies. Not a small printed pub­li­ca­tion, the fruit is enlarged with tex­ture. And, thumb­ing through the rest of the mag­a­zine reveals a sim­i­lar atti­tude. Drugs, excess, and dis­truc­tion are just some of the themes in this Pho­tog­ra­phy Issue, curated by Jerry Hsu and Vice Editor-in-Chief Jesse Pearson.

Eileen Myles sets the tone for the issue by explor­ing the his­tory of still lifes (and not­ing just how wrong it seems to say “lifes”). She talks in an author­i­ta­tive tone, and poses ques­tions but doesn’t ask them. It’s more of a med­i­ta­tion on still lifes, which is fit­ting based upon the long, rich his­tory of them. It seems bet­ter to reflect on the past and relate it to the future rather than try­ing to carve a com­pletely new inter­pre­ta­tion on the genre.

Over­all, I found the pho­tog­ra­phy both amus­ing and off-putting, which I am sure was part of the intent. Each pho­to­graph ref­er­ences a way of see­ing. Through the curat­ing of Jerry Hsu and Jesse Pear­son, we are pre­sented with pho­tog­ra­phers that have a tie to counter-culture and see excess. Some­times they cel­e­brate excess, while other times point­ing out the ridicu­lous­ness of it all. I enjoy where this issue takes the idea of still life. From the roots, thee things were a mem­ory, often of brighter times. They’ve sense mor­phed into some­thing larger — heav­ier in mean­ing, arguably more effec­tive in their mes­sage. Arrange­ment and our object-driven cul­ture will never go tired of the pho­tographs pre­sented in this issue.

All images via the Vice website. From top to bot­tom, in order: Slava Mogutin // Jaime Lee Cur­tis Taete // Vito Fun // Sandy Skoglund // Les Krims