Fall 2012 Tu/Th History of Photography

“Food” assumes a very broad specter of things that can be consumed. The purest form of food is fruits and grains that were created for human consumption. The original food is beautiful to our eye, as it was made for this purpose, as well as to fill our bodies with all essential elements required for building, supporting and healing our organism. Today we use fruits, grains, vegetables, nuts, meats and synthetic derivatives to widen the definition of “food”. But to make artificial food pleasing a lot of work is required. Huge industry exists to generate desirable taste, color, texture and nutritional value for synthetic foods. When that is done, “Frankenstein” is appreciated and made equal to an original creation. We are getting attached to it, and often choose substitute over the original. Regardless of it, food consumption is not a mere energy fulfillment procedure, but a religion of bodily satisfaction with a three times every day church attendance. And we crave more… No wonder then that we want to worship the subject of our adoration, we need to build temples to it, and we desire to paint and photograph it.

Having previous paragraph as a background, you can understand why I perceive some photographs of the food as icons for veneration (1^st picture from npr.org); some as documentation, equal to a Vodou experiences from another topic (9^th picture); some as subway’ paparazzi shots of Walker Evans (12^th picture); and some as an attempt to recreate actual experience by manipulating a subject, as Capa may have done (“dirty tricks” from pixiq.com). Some photographers treat food as a subject matter; some, just like “f64”, can’t care less that the subject is delicious, all they are looking for is a composition (15^th picture from robertmann.com); some display humbleness towards food by alluding to a naturalistic photography of 1880s (22^nd picture); and some are playing with their food (24^th picture).

Not every picture, where food is present in the shot, can convey emotions. Therefore, I don’t think that food by itself can be an art. What is important is a reproduction of the environment that can communicate feelings. To do so, food may or may not be used (picture 27 vs picture 28); it is just an accessory, which rarely essential. I have made over 20,000 pictures since 2001. Only a handful of them have food in them, and only a few communicate emotions because of food. Out of them all this one is my favorite (Sep. 2002):

For the Hurricane Sandy disaster I found many of my information through Facebook and many other social networking website. I gotta admit my friend also posted the “shark” photo and I really did believe it & i also shared it with a friend, pretty much everyone believe it in no time. For Hurricane Sandy my family and I were well prepared, we stocked up on many flashlights/candles, food and water (four cases) we also had one of our bathtub full of water just in case there were really no more water. I knew Hurricane Sandy was gonna keep me in all day so I invited my friend over to hang out. That night we decided to head outside to see if any stores were open where I live at 18^th ave there are many stores down the block. While walking down the block I was pretty scared of tree falling down the wind was very strong and loud so we walked in the street which I felt safer. Got to 18^th I saw very min cars, even the Dunkin Donut that’s open 24/7 wasn’t open. While walking back home we saw lighten it knocked down a tree down my block, me and my friend both ran back down to my house. We told my parent they laughed at us for being stupid in going out at this weather, I agreed. But thank God my friends and family is all safe. Beside my sister house which is located in Staten Island is completely ruined she had no water or electricity for 2 weeks.

When I heard news of a hurricane reaching New York, the thought that came to mind was “is it possible?” I have never experience the events of a hurricane and I didn’t plan to. But when Monday hit, the wind was howling and I heard rain drops pelting the floor and windows, it was far from over.  At around 7:30pm, I lost my electricity, at first it came back on for about a minute and then it went out again and never came back on.  So the next day not knowing when the power would be back, my family prepared for the worst, we geared up the flashlights and radio and tried to cook any food that were not spoiled, and we would head to bed at around 8pm.  This would happen for about a week, during this entire week we would head to a local supermarket that had a café where we can charge our electronics.  During the entire week, there was one moment when I realize that the damage had been done by Sandy, and that is the 3 hour wait for gas my family had to endure, I had never seen anything like it.  But it wasn’t over, about a week into the power outage in my neighborhood, we decided to stay at a hotel, because my house had become a gigantic freezer and it wasn’t going to warm up anytime soon.  Staying at the hotel gave me a bit of relieve because I had time to reflect on what had happen the past week.  First was the fact that my house was not hit very hard and only the power went out, there was no damage done or any flooding, and second was that none of my family members weren’t harm by the aftermath of Sandy , and last is that I was unharmed from all this.  I do wish for those that were affected by Sandy to a safe road to recovery.

Not only am I a fan of food photography, but it is an art I participate in myself.  Taking photos of food is something that a lot of people do now and it’s sort of a trend.  Whether it’s a professional, for a magazine or book, or an amateur who just enjoys the aesthetic vibe food gives off, food photography happens everywhere.  I enjoy food photography because it not only gives me aesthetic view of food, but it also reminds me of how delicious the food was when it was consumed.  What I love most about food photography is the different perspective it can reveal about the food, you could have a macro shot that reveals the texture of the food and different angles provide for a different tone and feeling that macro wouldn’t be able to capture.  Probably the best perk about food photography is the food itself, getting to spend time with another form of art.  The reason why I participate in food photography is curiosity, I’m curious as to how I can translate the sense of taste into a visual aspect, it might sound crazy but I want my audience to eat the pictures with their eye and see with their mouth, so for example, I want my audience to see what a strawberry tastes like and taste what a blueberry looks like.  With food photography, I try to activate the viewer’s sense of sight, touch, taste and smell.  With every photo I take I try to get the viewer to use those senses so they get the same enjoyment I had from taking the photo.

As I read Richard Whelan’s discussion of Capa’s photograph of a “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” I recall the controversy around the Moon Landing. I don’t doubt the fact that the Moon landing wasn’t staged since the evidence presented in the video of the mission has a clue that was impossible to counterfeit – trajectory of the dust in vacuum.

I don’t put my faith in human words; people lie, evidence doesn’t  Unfortunately, I can’t see substantial evidence in Capa’s photographs that would prove that the picture of a fallen soldier is not a fake. Also, I have no reason not to believe him. Therefore I tend to believe that the picture isn’t staged. It is too different from any other picture of the same theme that were photographed or painted at the same time. It isn’t informative enough to be considered for staging, unless Capa had too much time and material to spare to see what will fly as “awesome” in media.

Regardless of the authenticity of the picture, it benefited the society, so it doesn’t really matter if it was real. It provided people, who were far from the war, the window at the horror of the war. Picture shows the person who expresses signs of life, and yet might not be alive at the moment. It is more repulsive that Dadaism, but it makes you think. You feel for a soldier, who is not going to enjoy last rays of the setting sun. Natural reaction of the person seeing this famous photograph was to hate the war, and that is what was important.

Over the years I’ve learned that living in new york is somewhat a haven from natural disasters but when one does it us does a catastrophic amount of damage.With Sandy I think it was not the fact that we did know it was coming , it was that we didn’t take it seriously.We thought that we were getting another irene meaning it was a big deal but when it was time to show up it was nothing.When sandy hit us we were awe-struck our jaws were left hanging.Personally my area was not hit hard in the power , a tree knocked out our transformer and it took a week to replace.The worst is over but we are still facing gas shortages and day to day life isn’t normal yet.There are still people without power and or heat.Thankfully however we have had an a quick mobilization of disasters relief efforts from all the United states.The one thing i feel though that is a great injustice is that other countries in the caribbean were hit hard as well but they haven,’t received exposure like new york or staten island.Cuba, jamaica , and the country next to my parent country Haiti. While I’ve never been to these countries but they are just as bad.Its a real shame that no aid has reached them.Here is a photo of santiago de cuba.