Anti-Thanksgiving
Chicken 2015 ©Sarah Illenberger https://sarahillenberger.com
Excess in America is exacerbated by the holidays. Google #foodporn and you’ll see what I mean. With Thanksgiving around the corner, homemakers and foodies across the country are prepping to lather our Insta feeds with their perfectly proportioned, lit, and color-coordinated meals. Current food aesthetics are tied to standards of perfection and excess, bolstering capitalism’s agenda to inspire resentment towards what one has and a yearning for what one does not. Not to mention the food waste involved in all those bountiful displays, used solely for the perfect social media post and tossed in the trash right after. Thanksgiving is just one element of the dull, tacky food photography phenomenon but it sure does give me a good reason to complain about it. To me, food is about community, history, experimentation and process. This year, we’re looking at photographers who push past “foodporn” and reach for something far more interesting.
© Emma Ressel, Bad Soup, 2015, from the series Insatiable Hunger and the Peacock's Plume
When still life paintings of food arrangements became popular in the 17th century, artists were turning away from religious subjects to that of everyday life. It was a feat; an advancement towards art’s ability to represent the human experience in a fuller way. But “foodporn” today is more reminiscent of the aristocratic feasts of Ancient Rome, glutinous, excessive, overwhelming. Though, the current iteration—closely tied to American culture—can’t even measure up to that. At least we can historicize such events as triumphs of opulence. Now, it’s just unnecessary carbs. Emma Ressel, a New York based photographer captured such a dichotomy in her project Insatiable Hunger and the Peacock’s Plume.
© Emma Ressel, Untitled V, 2016, from the series Olives in the street
Ressel cites 17th-century Dutch paintings for this series. She notes their role in the articulation of the ephemeral nature of gastronomic abundance, as well as the booming trade economy the trend brought to the Netherlands. She writes in her artist statement, “The paintings depict a lush, decadent world, as well as the tragedy of its eventual rot and decay. The two inseparable qualities of food—that it will be ripe and then will go bad— is a melancholy reality I kept at the core of this project.” Looking at these photographs around Thanksgiving just seems right. Her critique of 21st-century American culture is spot on and executed both intelligently and playfully.
© Marco Arguello
Another phenomenon in the “food porn” stratosphere is the seamless aesthetic of Japanese “sampuru” or plastic food. “Sampuru” is the product of crafting plastic food, traditionally in Gujo Hachiman and since the 1920s. While these life-like creations may seem just another part of the unattainable standards of perfection force-fed to us by capitalism and pop culture, they actually represent an interesting piece of Japanese history. They stood in for menus in early dining culture. Customers could point to what looked tasty as opposed to reading a confusing document. Photographer Marco Argüello went to this famous factory and documented the process. What resulted was an informative and creative take on food photography. His pictures made me question my standards in terms of what food should look like. My mouth watered but my mind asked why. I know I’ve been trained to crave these unnatural depictions of food and it makes me question what it would look like if we were more honest with ourselves.
© Emma Ressel, Breakfast in Envelopes, 2016, from the series Insatiable Hunger and the Peacock's Plume
Personally, I like Thanksgiving as a holiday solely about food and family. I’m not into the weird patriotism or false nostalgia for a time of coexistence that never actually happened. The National Day of Mourning is a protest that coincides with the holiday. Folks who participate in the festival commemorate the violence and oppression of Native Americans. Violence that started with European settlers and persists today. This is a movement I agree with, but the gathering of loved ones is also something I’ve decided is important to maintain. My immigrant grandmother still thinks Thanksgiving is a ceremonial worshipping of the turkey. She sings “Happy Birthday Turkey!” and pours heavy glasses of wine. We never know what we’re going to cook but we always think outside the box and it rarely looks photogenic.
© Marco Arguello
