Creative Inspiration and Influences
by Paulette Tavormina

My first love was antiques. As a child, my grandmother often took me to a cluttered shop near her home, where she once bought me a miniature wooden table much like the ones I still use in my photographs. I began collecting small treasures—shells, keys, dice, ephemera, tiny ceramic dishes—and arranging them into stories. My bedroom became a museum of little things. Though my siblings teased me (and still do), they now bring me objects that make their way into my work—Italian honeybees, pea tendrils from the garden, oyster shells from Norway.

Another lasting influence was my grandparents’ garden, where they grew the most spectacular dahlias. I remember walking through rows of blossoms taller than I was, captivated by their colors and forms. Today I grow dahlias in my own garden, and they often find their way into my photographs. For me, they carry both personal memory and artistic inspiration—linking past and present, family and creative vision.

After working in an antiques store in Boston, I moved to New York and joined Sotheby’s Parke Bernet, surrounded by extraordinary works of art. Later, in Santa Fe, I was asked to photograph historic Native American pottery. With help from a local photographer, I immersed myself in studio work, and during that time, my friend Sarah McCarty introduced me to seventeenth-century still-life painters like Giovanna Garzoni and Maria Sibylla Merian. Their palettes and compositions were a revelation, and I knew I wanted to create my own natura morta still lifes with photography.

My career took me in many directions—commercial photography, food styling, and film. For Oliver Stone’s Nixon, I recreated twenty-five copies of Richard Nixon’s resignation letter for Anthony Hopkins to sign on camera. For The Astronaut’s Wife, I staged a Dutch still-life banquet of papayas, pheasants, geese, and roasted quails—directly inspired by the great food film Babette’s Feast. Each project drew me closer to the still-life language I longed to develop.

Travel has also deeply shaped my vision. While tracing family roots in Sicily, I gathered fruit and shells from my cousin’s garden, antiques from Paris and London flea markets, and curiosities like a miniature brass scale, chestnut pods from Versailles, and snails from Palermo—objects that continue to find their way into my photographs.


The Beginning of My Story

When I returned to New York in 2005, I rejoined Sotheby’s, bought my first digital camera, and devoted weekends to creating still lifes inspired by the Old Masters. Encouragement from colleagues was invaluable—especially Denise Bethel and Beth Iskander in Photography, and Andrea Kust in Old Master Paintings. In 2009, the Robert Klein Gallery in Boston began representing me, an extraordinary turning point.

Still-life photography enables me to create an environment, arrange objects to tell a story, and direct them into the fantasy I imagine. This brings me full circle—back to my first love of arranging and curating. Beauty is fleeting, yet it can be preserved forever in a single photograph. Creating these heartfelt vignettes allows me to explore love and loss, joy and sorrow—while remaining grateful for life’s abundance, and seizing that beauty.


Shared Beginnings


The Nurtured Garden


My Photo Studio