Reading Time: < 1 minute Food is big business right now, from esoteric street food diners to upscale Michelin restaurants,…

Reading Time: < 1 minute Food is big business right now, from esoteric street food diners to upscale Michelin restaurants,…
Reading Time: 6 minutes When William Henry Fox Talbot pioneered the salted paper and calotype processes in 1841, he soon turned his new inventions to food, capturing two baskets overflowing with fruit. Creating an image designed to mimic the paintings of the time, and to contrast the colours and textures of the pineapple and peaches, he also made an image rife with welcoming symbolism – the pineapple a sign of hospitality, the peach a sign of fecundity.
“Fox Talbot’s photograph was copying the traditions of painting and its attendant symbolism,” says photography curator and writer Susan Bright. “But it was also concerned with the role of photography, and elevating its status to that of art. In this respect it resonates nicely with artists such as Daniel Gordon, whose work also deals with the medium of photography. But his constructed pineapple has nothing to do with symbolism, or striving to be understood as art. It is art. He is questioning the role of visual perception, what is real and what is not.
“The way food is photographed says a tremendous amount about significant aspects of our culture,” Bright continues. “It is often about fantasy, be that national, sexual or historical. Photographs of food are the carrier for so many things – desire, consumption, taste, immigration and feminism, for example. It has been a major part of the development of fine art, editorial, fashion, marketing and product photography throughout the 20th and 21st century.”
Reading Time: 8 minutes “What I experienced and witnessed in most families was a really strong sense of well-being and love towards each other, because it’s tough out there,” says Sian Davey, whose latest photoseries, Together, is about to go on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London ahead of an international tour. The photographer, who is already known for photographing her own family, was compelled to start a project that celebrated modern, diverse families after separating from her partner and seeing first hand how it affected her own family.
Reading Time: 13 minutes When chef and Momofuku restaurants founder David Chang set up Lucky Peach in 2011, The…
Reading Time: 4 minutes In this second instalment of Industry Insights, the Brand Visual Director of Vogue Italia reflects on the challenges posed by moving a festival from the physical space to virtual, and how she and her colleague, Francesca Marani, overcame them.
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Plastic is a generic and ubiquitous material that may end up choking the planet, and in turn strangle us”
Reading Time: 3 minutes “Women’s contribution to the farming industry is significant but often overlooked. There are underlying barriers such as access to land, class, motherhood, lack of clear leadership roles”
Reading Time: 6 minutes Elena Helfrecht, Jörg Colberg, Rafal Milach and others respond to the state of vulnerability through image and text, as part of our ongoing series Picture This
Reading Time: 6 minutes On this day ten years ago, the UN recognised clean water and sanitation as a human right, but one in ten people still lack access. Wateraid commissioned 10 visual artists from the global south to respond to this issue