Martin Parr "A Turkey" 1994
Happy Thanksgiving! It seems appropriate that we think about food this week, and the idea that photographing food is an art form. There is a long history of photographing food for commercial purposes.  The following NPR article outlines a current evolution in food photography, in which more people are becoming engaged with the aesthetics of food. Compare the images in the NPR slideshow to an exhibition of food-related subjects by art photographers at the Robert Mann Gallery and “food portraits” by Irving Penn, an acclaimed portrait photographer.
NPR’s “Appetizing Art of Food Photography”
Robert Mann Gallery’s exhibit “Food For Thought”
A few examples of Irving Penn’s Food Portraits
Please post your responses by Thursday, December 1st.
I just ate food 20 minutes ago, but now I am hungry again.
The NPR slide show consists of images taken from above of a plate of food or just people eating. They are direct photos, no manipulation or adjustments done to the picture. This could be a reason why they do not look like the food commercial photos. The first and seventh photos seem to be the only ones to be set up. Other are just taken for what they are.
Images from Robert Mann Gallery are different than NPR slide show image because they are all staged. I found the number seventeen, Chicken, Pear and Saxophone, 1996, by Michiko Kon to be very interesting. He took a headless chicken which easy ready to be cooked and put a half cut pear as its head. The chicken is sitting on the saxophone and looks like it is looking at the viewer. Robert Doisneau’s photo, Les Pains de Picasso, 1952, is hilarious. The man is sitting close to the table with his hands under the table and the bread is set up to look like his fingers. It looks like he has huge fingers.
Everyone loves food. Food represents life, cultures, and togetherness. This is why we feel inclined to take pictures of it. I’m willing to bet everyone in the class took a picture of what they had at their Thanksgiving table. Food’s beauty can be compared to that of a painting as seen in Paulette Tavormina’s “Lemons and Pomegranates” and “Figs and Morning Glories” in Robert Mann’s Gallary. But my favorite is Irving Penn’s “Frozen Foods”. The shapes, patterns, and colors all remind me of why I love photography and food.
I absolutely agree with the statement of Lary Nighswandes that all major things in our lives we celebrate around food or drink. Every holiday and just simple date are usually accompanied by food, that’s why we like to take photos of food.
Most of all I like NPR slide show because food on this pictures looks very nice and delicious, and they can be used as advertisement of any restaurant. I like it because it consist not only of food pictures, but also of photos of eating people. For example on photo #12 and #9 we can see the difference between Americans, who eat sandwiches with Coke, and railroad bellmen from Delhy, India who drink tea in the traditional clothes. So we can see two different cultures and compare them.
Images from Robert Mann Gallery look for me more old-fashion, because most of them are black and white, but at the same time very creative and interesting.
Food is a great thing to photograph in my opinion. Food has the most interesting and unique textures & the colors can be very vibrant. In NPR’s “the appetizing art of food photography”. Also everyone has a major connection with food, its very important in peoples culture so it doesn’t surprise me that people would want to take a picture of it for example i have gone to a restaurant and taken a picture of my food and uploaded to facebook before i eat it theres something about capturing food right before you devourer it. Even with pictures of people eating just shows how much there enjoying the food ever notice when you’re at the dinner table and everyone starts to eat no one is talking everyone is just focus on the food.
EVERYONE LOVES FOOD !
Wow, simply amazing. I just ate also, looking at the photos make me cherish food even more. The NPR photos were standard taken and not adjusted. I can assume that most of the dishes were all cooked in one day and placed on the table to be photographed. It is still interesting though because the show captures all the different cultures of food out there. The dumplings (one of my favorites in reality), the set of french fries doused in ketchup with the bitten hamburgers and the cocktail condiments all caught eye. Now the food portraits from Irving Penn look very creative. Each photo consists of foods that are never together at once, at least normally. The Watermelon with the grapes and eaten bread on the table, the dark pear with the cheese underneath, all look strange but captivating. Simply remarkable.
The differences I sensed were that food photography in NPR artcile evokes desire for food, aroma of food, and memory about food in a crative way. Also I noticed that the most of photos capture finished cooking or ingredents and condiments that suggest the final product like the picture of cocktail. On the other hand, food photography by Robert Mann and Irving Penn doesn’t necessarily remind of food. It is purely focused on artisitic, beautiful, and poetic aspects of food. Especially, on Irving Penn’s food photography, it is obvious that he tried to create photos look like high-class classic still life paitings or pastel drawings. It doesn’t evoke any desire for food to viewers. As for Robert Penn’s photograhpy, I particularly found that the picture of eggs in a bowl is artistic and poetic because the ratio of black and white is well balanced but has an assynmentrical composition and the sense of framing by including the vertical part of window frame on the left side of the picture. Besides, eggs give an interesting focal point and blurry outside and reflection suggests some sort of emotion.
Food photography is absolutely amazing. I usually take pictures of dishes myself and to see how others see food from their perspective is great. I thought it was really cute how Irving Penn’s photo of this bowl of grapes, a lemon and a slice watermelon looks like a funny monkey. For some reason it looks as if Irving Penn is portraying an object or a person with his photographs. The NPR slideshow starts off with sophisticated and ends off wanting more. With different pictures of food, to pictures of people devouring their lunch and some pictures showing you the textures and its “feel good” vibe, makes me want to raid my fridge and whip up something good.
To me, the real art form is the arrangement of the food but of course the way it is photographed can further bring out the aesthetics. I believe all things can be aesthetic, it’s a matter of how it is presented. For example. fast food advertisement is completely different from what you get. One could say there is nothing aesthetic about a cheeseburger but companies advertise it in a way that makes it look good and tasty. Some of the method used can be found in this link http://www.pixiq.com/article/food-photo-tricks . Who are the real artists? The photographers photographing food in a restaurant or the culinarians who prepared it?
Food is an art form and the way you present or arrange it, is what helps it to make visually appealing and tasty through a photograph and to a viewer. The NPR’s “Appetizing Art of Food Photography”, presents food from different cultures. Irving Penn’s few examples of Food Portraits, were very creative because the food is set up to look like paintings or frames of art. Robert Mann’s exhibition on the “Food For Thought”, presents a lot of white and black photography images of food as well as color photography images of food too, so it’s creative as well be in a more photographic art form. Although some of the photographs do seem to look like paintings too.
Food photography and is great, I recently browsed an Edible Brooklyn magazine and I really enjoyed seeing the photography it was very raw and pure and they did a good job at documenting the social moments in which the food was honored. I have worked a few editorial photography gigs that involved food and it was definitely fun to see food stylists do their thing. I’m glad that there a new jobs being created as a result of food photography’s popularity.