Ehre, Mut und Zuversicht ( Honor, Courage and Confidence) from the portfolio "Stiller Nachmittag (The Quiet Afternoon)

Peter Fischli and David Weiss are Swiss artists who have collaborated on a variety of sculpture, film, and photography projects since 1979. Their Stiller Nachmittag (Quiet Afternoon) series consists of groupings of precariously balanced objects that the two men carefully arranged and then photographed in an intentionally deadpan style. The unlikely combination of unrelated everyday items in this image-a metal pipe, a piece of wood, a saw, and a bottle of wine-appear to be in a strange state of disequilibrium, brightly lit and teetering on the verge of collapse. Their artificial juxtaposition seems alternately unsettling and funny, calling into question our faith in the documentary "truth" of photography.