Photographer Paul Vinet created a series of photographs in 2012-2013 called “Stories”. It is a collection of stunning still life arrangements using decades old objects from his parent’s basement of their Paris home.  Many of these objects were broken, but had been stored religiously. After his father’s death, the basement was to be cleaned out, but he was able to photograph and keep some of these wonderful old things before they were discarded.  This series is a homage to his father, and it’s also a way to make sense of the accumulation of junk — but junk that retains a great deal of history, emotion, and meaning.

By applying gold leaf to the table Paul purposely transforms it into a holy platform on which he displays these old objects as sacred relics. With the same intention he had for the series, Vinet references Pre-Renaissance Italian paintings where gold symbolizes the divine.

Paul Vinet born in 1969 in Paris, now works and lives in New York. He has shown in galleries in New York, Paris, Brussels and Washington DC and at Museum Arthur Batut in Toulouse (France). His education was completed in Paris where he earned two bachelor’s degrees, one in graphic design from Academie Charpentier and one in Art History from Ecole du Louvre with an emphasis in contemporary art and a master’s degree, also completed at the Louvre in Museum Studies.