PROFESSION: FOOD PHOTOGRAPHER

In the context of applied photography, the need for specialisation gradually led to the establishment of an independent profession of the food photographer. The historical development of the approach to food photography in the Czech Republic can be traced on the example of published cookbooks. Compared with the Western world, food photographs appear in these cookbooks with a considerable delay, compared, for example, to T. Percy Lewis - A. G. Bromley, The Book of Cakes of 1903, which already contained numerous black and white photographs. In Czechoslovakia, until the mid-1960s, just a handful of books on cooking were on the market and most of them did not even contain pictures or only drawings.¹ From the second half of the 1960s onwards, more and more cookbooks with extensive colour photographs began to be published, replacing the previously popular black-and-white drawn illustrations. The 1996 book Mladá kuchárka (The Young Cook) is still dominated by black and white photographs and food photographed directly from above with only a few examples of more modern arranging and lighting.

At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, simultaneously, the print quality of publications increased, the use of bold colours was toned down, and the quality of photographs generally grew as more and more FAMU (Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague) graduates began to pursue this field of advertising photography. Jaroslav Prokop described the field as relatively unrestricted: "There weren't many rules or taboos regarding photographing food. One such semi-rule was that we differentiated colours into ‘edible’ and ‘inedible’, for example, blue was a typical inedible colour, it was never to be paired with food."² Books celebrating the production of the food industry, agricultural cooperatives and industrial enterprises can also be seen as a specific variant of cookbooks. Agricultural products by Agrokombinát Slušovice were photographed by Jan Regal from Zlín (1938) to be featured on promotional items, wall calendars, and displays for trade shows and fairs.³ Thanks to editors Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, the book Katalog masných výrobků(Catalogue of Meat Products) with photographs by Jiří Putta became internationally known.⁴ The plastic red cover of the book, the still lifes of raw and smoked meats decorated with herbs and vegetables, the amateur lighting and the consistent emphasis on central compositions all make the book a specific object.

The increased interest in cookbooks came with the change of political air after 1989. This initial period is best characterized by the books Zmrzlina (Ice Cream, 1991) and Mixujeme bez alkoholu (Mixing Without Alcohol, 1991). Crisp cool light and the sharpening of the entire photo are used, and attempts to utilize the whole image area to the fullest are also evident.

The qualitative decline in food photography after 1989 was also accompanied by a low culture of gastronomy. For a long time, it seemed that most buyers from the countries of the former Soviet Bloc were only interested in the price when it came to food. But since 2005, there has been a gradual transformation, with good restaurants eventually appearing and social networks filling up with photos of food. People have started to enjoy food but also to address its impacts on health and the environment, and cookbooks are trying to bring new concepts of eating.

This transformation has also significantly affected the work of the photographer. A food stylist or decor stylist began to be used much more often. Previously, there was a noticeable disconnect between what was being photographed and what the client was selling to customers or the restaurant was serving. Photography used completely different materials and technologies to make everything look good for the camera – glass strawberries, mock-up ice creams made to not melt, potatoes cooked with turmeric to make them more yellow, undercooked pasta, cakes reinforced with cardboard, salads or meat sprayed with glycerine, glue added to milk, meat not properly done but just lightly seared in a pan with dark streaks made on it with heated iron bars to make it look grilled, whipped cream replaced by a special spray of a completely different composition. The food was photographed in an unnecessarily frilly fashion, it was too perfect and therefore artificial.

With a bit of hyperbole, one could say that the food photographer conveys taste to the viewer, as Marek Bartoš told me in an interview, "I want to create bubbles under the viewer's tongue." Today's trend is to photograph real food as it is. "And when I need to underlay, for example, meat on a plate, I don't do it with plastic rubber or foil but I underlay it with a piece of potato. I try to work with food in a sacred way. It keeps us alive. I take pictures of it but I don't want to abuse it." Photographs are taken in daylight, showing kitchens and portraits of chefs or they are styled directly at the farms where the products are made. Often a little bit of "dirt" is brought into the staged images to make the world of food “more human". The food is presented naturally or even appears half eaten or bitten into. And photographers are also noticing where the ingredients for their photographs are purchased.

This change is undoubtedly related not only to people's interest in what they consume but also to the change in the technology used in photography. Today, instead of slides, digital technologies are used, which are much more sensitive to light and, at the same time, allow the colour of light to be adjusted. In the past, lamps with powerful bulbs gave off strong heat and food quickly became stale or melted but today, speedlights and LED lamps are used and even plain daylight is making a comeback. Also in the approach to image, many artists are turning away from the shallow depth of field and foreground focusing, leaning towards high sharpness, harsh light, hard shadows.

FOOD IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Food serves as a strong binding agent for identification with a family, a community or a particular region and nation. And food also expresses, among other things, a unique ritual as well as everydayness, repetitiveness, the passage of time. In this context, it is also essential to recall other associations bound to food: ephemerality, mould, rot – simply decay.

For me, one of the most compelling representations of the Holocaust has been the publication of the images held in the archives of the Prague Jewish Museum.⁵ These do not depict the horrors and suffering of the extermination camps. They are carefully prepared "annual reports", publicity photographs produced with exquisite professionalism, accompanied by totals of how many pans, plates, coats, and even such personal items as homemade preserves and jams were recovered from the apartments of people who had to leave for the transports. Jewish photographers created these images with extraordinary precision, stacking spice grinders, then poppy seed grinders, then meat grinders in huge racks. Repetitive elements are allowed to stand out in top views and diagonals, carefully complemented by spectacular airbrush interventions. With this meticulousness, the creators no doubt justified their indispensability, delaying their, and their families', transport.

Josef Sudek's simple still lifes from the 1950s are well known, with bread, eggs, onions, apples or plums as the main motif. In Sudek's first monograph (1956), we can find photographs with titles such as Egg or Bread and Egg (1950), Plate with Egg (1950), Onion, Still Life, Apple (all 1950-1954), in the monograph by Zdeněk Kirschner from 1990, we can find them arranged in the series Jednoduché zátiší (Simple Still Life). We can only surmise the extent to which these almost ascetic still lifes by Sudek are a reaction to the socialist realism method promoted by the state at the time. Also in Jan Svoboda's photographs, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, apples or pears appear, which can be seen as a tribute to the work of Josef Sudek but also as a reminiscence of Svoboda's youth in his native Bohuňovice na Hané. From the end of the 1960s and in the 1970s, and sporadically in the 1980s, motifs of a set table with empty plates or piles of salt and flour appear among his works when the white foodstuff becomes more of a suitable obstacle to hold back the light, a place where a still life could happen.

Around us, we can see the cult of food and its overabundance as well as the starvation of millions of people on the planet and the inability to provide enough food and clean water. In recent years, food has emerged from the ghettos of pantries and refrigerators into the public space and has begun to permeate many discourses. With activism in mind and within the context of art, artists are addressing the origins of food, its ecological footprint, the impact on the ecosystem and on the communities that professionally produce food or whose livelihoods depend on agricultural labour.

The camera glorifies, problematizes, and devours the food. Sometimes, it is only with the passing of many years that we appreciate the value of photographing the food that our mother, grandmother, father cooked for us every day. It is not only the major culinary feats that deserve our attention but equally the food that is unexceptional, everyday but fascinating in its coded constancy.

Image captions

1 | Zdeněk Lhoták ›Rosette of marinated salmon with crème fraiche‹, Foodstyling Jiří Král, 2002

2 | Pavel Vavroušek: ›Nová Sedlica‹, 1971–1981

3 | Karolina Wojtas, 2020