A matchstick is something so ordinary and simple that one could hardly imagine it could become an object of art. A Russian artist Stanislav Aristov however, unveils the artistic potential of matches in his his “Спички” (“matchsticks” in Russian) series. This 30-year-old photographer literally plays with fire by bending the matches into the desired shapes as they burn, then uses a macro lens and a studio flash to shoot the fire and the smoke around it. The artist then moves to Photoshop to finish the image.
Stanislav says that the idea came to him completely by accident:
“I was playing with a pack of matches while I was deciding what to photograph for a competition. It was while I was watching the match that I began to think of how it represents life.
There is the burnt part representing the past, the smoke of memories left and the untouched part of the match the future.”
