Foodtography
Photographing food, then and now
From gleaming billboards boasting of boiled crawfish to our neighbor’s latest #brunchtime Instagram post, in Louisiana we are constantly consuming imagery of our favorite cultural totem: food. Food is an important part of our humanity and perhaps what we most love to share. In fact, in today’s digital landscape, our appetite for photos of food has reached such astronomical proportions that new words are being coined to describe the fetish. The word “foodtography,” according to YourDictionary.com, for instance, means “the practice of diners photographing food they are served in restaurants, usually for the purpose of sharing the photos on social media.” Particularly nowadays, some might argue that foodtography should encompass photos taken in private kitchens as well.
The passion for capturing food in photos long precedes social media, though. The first image of food as the primary focus of a photograph was taken in 1844, only a few years after the camera was invented, by William Henry Fox Talbot: a bowl of fruit, which he titled “A Fruit Piece.” For over a century, photographers from Irving Penn to Sandy Skoglund and Cindy Sherman have turned their artistic eye upon food. The earliest photographs mimicked fine art still-life paintings, but it did not take long for artists to begin experimenting, using foodstuffs as a stand-in for social, cultural, and political commentary. The advent of commercial photography in the 1930s saw food as a commodity appearing in advertisements and on billboards. Magazines dedicated to the subject, such as Condé Nast’s Gourmet, whose first issue came out in 1941, increased demand for high-quality pictures. By the 1950s, the popularity of fast food joints and the growing dine-out trend gradually resulted in a specialized niche within the photography industry.
It is the cookbook, however, with its images of sumptuous, artfully arranged dishes displayed on page after page that brought food photography into the home. The earliest known cookbook—three clay tablets dating from 1700 BCE which include twenty-five versions of stew—obviously did not contain pictures. The first to include visuals is Bartolomeo Scappi’s 1570 Opera dell’arte del cucinare, or “Opera on the art of cooking,” a collection of nearly one thousand Renaissance recipes accompanied by a set of twenty-eight copper engravings, including the first known picture of a fork. While a few early twentieth-century cookbooks did include photographic images—such as Mrs. Beeton’s Cookery Book, published in 1901—their regular inclusion was not possible until advancement in printing techniques and photographic processes much later. By the 1940s, color photography had been invented and large companies like Crisco began to produce free “cookbooklets” containing recipes and photographs to promote use of their products.
The patties were pre-soaked in lard, sesame seeds were glued onto the buns, and condiments applied with syringes. There was precious little room for error, unlike today with our reliance on software programs like Photoshop.
In Louisiana, we have our own cookbook legacy. La Petite Cuisinière Habile, a reprint of an earlier European work, became America’s first French-language cookbook when it was published in New Orleans in 1840. Since then, Louisiana cooks have been educating the world on the differences between an étouffée and a fricassée and providing illustrated instructions on how to create dishes like crawfish pie, sausage-and-ham jambalaya, and gumbo z’herbes. There have been fifteen editions of the The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book, first published in 1900, and the illustrated chart of various rouxs in Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen (first edition 1984) has become “one of the most referenced cookbook pages in the history of Louisiana cooking,” according to food writer Rein T. Fertel, whose grandmother founded the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse chain. From River Road Recipes and Talk About Good by the Junior League of Baton Rouge and Lafayette, respectively, to books by award-winning chefs like Emeril Lagasse, who has produced eighteen cookbooks—there is no shortage of recipes, with their accompanying imagery, available. Among these, the hefty tome titled The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine by Chef John Folse stands out due to sheer quantity of photos. Restaurants too, from Antoine’s to Mulate’s, also have produced cookbooks featuring mouthwatering images as part of their promotional strategies.
When Baton Rouge photographer David Carlysle Humphries got his start in the 1970s, commercial food photography was a thriving market in America. He began with Piccadilly Restaurants, later adding Ralph & Kacoo’s and Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers to his portfolio. According to Humphries, his food photography stood out at the time because of his passion for the subject matter, and also thanks to the fact that “most photographers didn’t want to do it.” Not only was it laborious to manipulate a large format 8x10” view camera to get tight close-ups, but the set-up had to be thoroughly tested in advance. Before the food even entered the picture, numerous instant Polaroids were taken to correct the set and refine the image. A photoshoot took hours to days to complete. Due to harsh lighting conditions and the lengthy timeframe, it was crucial to “build the food.” Food stylists were flown in from big cities. These creative professionals employed all manner of tricks to keep up the food’s appearance, from using paint to simulate mustard or Elmer’s Glue as a stand-in for cereal milk to melting cheese on the spot with a hairdryer. Humphries recalled one shoot in which fifty to sixty burgers were held together with toothpicks. The patties were pre-soaked in lard, sesame seeds were glued onto the buns, and condiments applied with syringes. There was precious little room for error, unlike today with our reliance on software programs like Photoshop to adjust, correct, and enhance images. Humphries, who now also uses digital processes in his professional and artistic practice, said that ninety five percent of food photography today is taken digitally.
A new generation of commercial digital photographers emerged in the early 2000s, among them Collin Richie, who also resides in Baton Rouge. Digital cameras revolutionized photography. While food stylists are still in demand for high-profile clients, capturing food imagery is less troublesome than it used to be. For instance, Richie said he shoots “tethered,” meaning he connects his camera to another device like a tablet or even a smartphone, which allows the food stylist and the photographer to simultaneously view the shot before it is taken. Aside from such improvements in technology, Richie said a recent change is the overall aesthetic of food photos. Instead of multiple dishes laid out on a table with a cornucopia of raw ingredients and floral arrangements, today’s trend is toward minimalism. The focus is on a single, well-executed dish captured in direct light––a brighter image, but with more shadows. As Richie described it, the photo should “hit you in the mouth.” Another trend, he said, is to show more evidence of human interaction, such as hands holding a sandwich or lips on a straw, suggesting that the food pictured is about to be eaten. According to Richie, “Restaurants want the image to look more organic, like a customer took it, but, they want it to be professionally executed.”
This current fad is no doubt influenced by foodtography. People want to see images of food reminiscent of the ones on our Instagram feeds—photos taken by ordinary people with cell phone cameras. Instagram currently has more than 942,112,858 images attached to just four of the one hundred most popular hashtags for food imagery: #food, #foodporn, #instafood, and #yummy. Food is perhaps the most photographed subject on the network, especially if these stats are added to the astounding number of food images found on other sites like Facebook and on blogs. Since 1997, when Chowhound provided the first online community for the food-obsessed, food blogs have continued to grow in popularity. Today, there are virtually millions of food blogs to salivate over.
“Good food photos are a defining element for a blog,” said George Graham, who launched his award-winning food blog acadianatable.com in 2010 and now has over fourteen thousand engaged social media followers. Graham is from Louisiana and no stranger to local fare. A move to Lafayette in the 1970s, however, marked a turning point in his career. It was there that he fell in love with the Cajun-Creole food culture of Acadiana. As a cook, he started collecting not only recipes but also stories passed down from generation to generation by the people he met. Graham gradually learned the art of writing recipes and taught himself how to plate, style, prop, and photograph the foods he prepared. Graham said that “the photographs brought [his blog] to life,” conveying the richness of his unique subject matter. Over 180 full-color photographs are included in Graham’s Acadiana Table: Cajun and Creole Home Cooking from the Heart of Louisiana, published in 2016. His newest cookbook venture Fresh from Louisiana is due out this November. For all his success, Graham modestly claims that “[he] is still learning.”
Indeed, so many of us are aspiring food photographers these days, learning as we go. Our appetite to share pictures of food is showing no signs of abating. When asked for a word of advice on how to take more professional-looking images, both Humphries and Richie stressed the importance of lighting. Richie offered a handy foodtography tip for your next restaurant visit: “Sit by a window and use a menu to reflect the light back onto the dark side of the dish.” He said it will make all the difference. If only it was that easy!
Elizabeth Chubbuck Weinstein is an independent curator, writer, and creative consultant based in Baton Rouge.