The Vintage Project
The vintage portraiture work of Tyler Orehek began in early 2012. The series was created in part to pay homage to an era long gone through distinctive and wistfully crafted compositions using the artist’s then-three-year-old son and more recently his younger daughter as his exclusive models. By incorporating authentic antiques, period clothing and carefully selected backgrounds, reality is suspended if only for a moment. The photographs possess an undeniable sentimentality, which transports the observer to another time and place.
"The Dutch proverb “a Jan Steen household” originated in the 17th century and is used today to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped inspire this body of work. I am the oldest of nine children and now the mother of three. As Steen’s personal narratives of family life depicted nearly 400 yrs. ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I have explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the lives of my sisters and their families at home. These images are both fictional and auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the fantastic elements of our everyday lives, both imagined and real"
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