Photographer Dan Bannino has created a series titled "Still Diet," in which he photographs bizarre celebrity fad diets in the style of Old Master still life paintings. The series features diets associated with figures such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Charles Saatchi, Beyoncé Knowles, Henry VIII, and others, using carefully arranged food items and props to mimic classical compositions.
The project matters because it juxtaposes contemporary celebrity culture and restrictive eating trends with the aesthetic traditions of 15th-century art, revealing unexpected beauty in deprivation. By elevating these often absurd diets to the status of fine art, Bannino comments on the enduring human fascination with extreme self-discipline and the visual power of still life as a genre.