KEN SWARNER: FOOD AS ART >>>

My interview this week with Karen Wise â€" the celebrated New York still life photographer who made her mark capturing the splendor of food went longer than space provided in print. The following is Wise’s musings on a few open ended questions I posed.

KEN SWARNER: Describe your career.

KAREN WISE: I started my career as a fine art photographer. After graduating from RISD with my BFA, I moved to NYC to pursue food and still life photography. In college I had shot a lot of “stylized documentary” of my family, influenced by Tina Barney and Larry Sultan. After college, I was shooting a lot of editorial food and still life work, while pursuing my own fine art projects. I found myself increasingly inspired by still life photographers and classical greats: Irving Penn, Edward Weston and Karl Blossfeldt, and Tina Modotti.

SWARNER: What is your background?

WISE: I grew up in Montreal, Canada, where I was fortunate enough to be able to try a lot of different multi-ethnic cuisines. My aunt left Montreal for Boston where she became a professional chef and food writer for the Boston Globe. We often traveled to Boston for Passover or Thanksgiving dinners.

Similarly, when my mother went back to school to earn a Psychiatric degree, my dad, also a physician took cooking courses at night while my sister and I were still in Junior High. He took classes on Chinese cooking and French Cuisine. I think we were lucky to always have good home cooked meals, and fine wines around us growing up.

SWARNER: What is it about food photography that you find interesting to photograph?

WISE: Somehow I find still life photography really cathartic. When a beautiful dish is plated and placed on the table in front of me, I love the challenge of capturing the colors, the textures and the flavors on film.

Time stops for me. I become extremely focused to the point of only hearing my own thoughts. I am under a dark cloth focusing my 4x5 view camera, angling it, focusing it and cropping until what I see really thrills me. Then I click the shutter and the magic begins.

As in a beautiful portrait of a model or a bride, I want to choose the focal length, the camera angle and the lighting that is best suited for the food. In a way, I am making a food “portrait.”

Still Life with food for me is reminiscent of the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio’s paintings. In the painting of Bacchus, (the god of wine) “… he represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficial influences. He is the patron deity of agriculture and the theater. He was also known as the Liberator (Eleutherios), freeing one from one's normal self, by madness, ecstasy, or wine.” â€" Wikepedia.

Even in the 1500s food and wine were celebrated in art, they were painted often and these masterpieces spoke of intoxication, pleasure, richness, and invited the viewer to look and wish he/she were there.

Ingredient shots (as opposed to photos of prepared food) are some of my favorite photographs to make because they are reminiscent of these old baroque and Renaissance paintings. I particularly love to use beautiful props to enhance my food photos. I love the bowls that hold fruit or the vessels that contain the milk … I love the way the light falls on eggs in a glass cup, the look of orange pekoe tea in a white ceramic vessel, and I love the way wine looks against rich colored woods. I love the textures, of the sauces, the syrups, the garnishes and all of that against pretty plates and cups.

I shoot food like fine art, with an attention to detail, composition and natural lighting, but with the ultimate goal of presenting the food in a way where people really want to eat it.

SWARNER: From your perspective, is there a connection between the visual presentation of food and its taste?

WISE: Not according to the show The Iron Chef, which puts the visual presentation in a category of its own! But I happen to think so

Yes, I think a beautiful visual presentation of a dish will inevitably make the food taste better; there is definitely a psychological element to taste. And bad visual presentation could definitely spoil your appetite (and/or make the food taste worse). The drool factor plays a role here, if the food looks like it will taste good, and if you are hungry, then you are probably already drooling.

LINK:  Food as art feature in the Weekly Volcano