Sixteen autumn still lifes for the end of October, seven and a half minutes each, two hours with no music and no narration.
This one is about evening. The whole collection is lit by two candles and whatever glow comes out of the pumpkins themselves, against a wall of deep charcoal with a plum undertone — dark, but never flat black, because a true black void behind the subject kills the orange instead of lifting it. Finding that wall colour took longer than anything else here.
What you will not find is gore. No blood, no skulls, no cobwebs, no cartoon ghosts. Halloween decorating in a real house looks like heaped gourds, dried grasses, bronze ribbon and a lot of candlelight, and that is what these are. A few scenes are carved and lit from inside; most are smooth white and pale green pumpkins that have never seen a knife. That mix is what carries the collection past the 31st and through the rest of autumn.
The sideboard is the same one in all sixteen. Only the light and the arrangement change.
