Whilst looking at still life, I remembered Wolfgang Tillmans's still lifes. I am not sure if that is what he calls them, but that is what they appear like. Apart from being visually beautiful, I also love the way he use fragments, rubbish and more classical elements (like fruit and flowers) to create the images. His arrangements look really natural.
I love Tillmans work generally, his installations are stunning as are the individual photographs. For the collections project I have also been really interested in the way he uses and displays visual ephemera. For the collections project one of my ideas is to create a large scale collage based installation of visual ephemera (including objects). That sounds like a really awful description, but I think it would be good in actuality.