Process

This project is a study in understanding the power of food and narrative through a series in photography. I approached my photography in a way that did more than capture products for quick visual payoffs to garner clicks to buy. My end goal was to create a message that’s more emotive and suggestive by connecting to the media consumer in subtle ways.

I am a Designer and Photographer with an interest in strategy and a love of story. I work in a fast-paced, data, sales, and results-oriented environment with tight deadlines. The industry gives little time to using stories in a strategic sense that has layered complexity. I believe a more creative use of strategy has enormous room for growth. This project explores storytelling through design and photography with layered complexity while using elements of strategy.

As evidenced by the sudden growth of long-form serial narrative in television's new Golden age and the interconnectedness of movie franchises, media consumers have an increased thirst for deeper narrative tones. With layered cues and easter eggs used to tell larger story arcs society is coming to expect more from media and the stories that are told. Food is at the heart of many of these stories and can carry themes and nuance well. It can be complex, layered, evocative, and beautiful. It is also an elemental human need and experience.

I see longer-form storytelling elements as a stronger form of strategy with community resonance and creating conversation. It can be a means to get people invested and cultivate awareness through these stories. It can be used to promote conversations of historic and contemporary issues of difference with empathy, and even help support an acceptance of difference. By making these a part of design through the use of layered storytelling and strategy they could be available in people’s everyday lives and for this reason, we need a variety of approaches. This takes an idea of social issues and presents it to people not always touched by these social issues themselves but begin by noticing and looking.

A successful medium in encompassing these approaches is film. It is a cornerstone of storytelling with a rich history in visual vocabulary. Using that as inspiration I began with a study of my favorite food scenes and how they communicate through food, color, and composition. To give some examples, I looked at Rocky and his breakfast of champions’ raw eggs in a glass. The Breakfast Club’s Saturday detention lunch depicting class and lifestyle. And the racism of Sal’s pizzeria and the food economy of the neighborhood in “Do the Right Thing”.

Taking cues from food, film and it’s deconstruction, I moved forward with two dining excerpts from books. I chose Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Madeline Miller’s Circe for the feminist and femme-identifying themes they both carry. I have always had an interest in these themes as social issues and their evolution from the past to the present.

I dug into the books, deconstructing the overarching themes, and creating the food scenes and sets with them. I researched scholarly and pop culture articles online and read adjacent materials.

Themes for The Bell Jar

I focused on the suffocation of social identities and the constraints they create. To be accepted and succeed, one must become homogeneous to specific mandates of identity. As in The Bell Jar, even though it appeared as though there were two possibilities presented, career and domesticity, the only choice was the perpetuation of motherhood. There are many metaphors in the Bell Jar relating to the consequences of indulging in independence and freedom. To quickly set the stage, Esther Greenwood, the principal character is being hosted at a glamorous lunch by Ladies Day magazine along with her fellow interns.

I wrote a thematic brief to keep the work focused and look back to as a reference point.

Young female interns are wined and dined at the Ladies’ Day Magazine luncheon with rich decadent foods like avocados stuffed with crabmeat salad and chicken slathered with caviar. After this indulgent and performative lunch, they all get devastating food poisoning. Referring to the feminine theme that glamour and gluttony are dark rewards for repression and conformity. Repression in this book also takes the form of self-destructive acts. The characters relieve their shadow sides with parties of “wild and abandon” and are later punished for it. Running from the perfectionism it takes to conform and succeed takes dark turns.

With this theme in mind, I created a moodboard to guide the shoot.

Themes for Circe

Circe is a witch taken from an archetypal hero’s journey that’s been a part of our culture as far back as Homer’s Odyssey and brings it into a contemporary feminine framework. The heroine’s journey is told with male perspective. The key idea is how in a masculine ideal based society, one could use the blueprint of work to find a novel way out/through and make peace with the identity of “other”. It is a story of finding pieces of empowerment in an epic feminine journey.

A heroine’s journey through a universal male landscape of the Roman myth follows the general leads of feminine constraints. Circe is placed in exile as the rebellious feminine. Yet she uses that space, outside of society, to define her own identity. The witch empowers herself through intention and work. Transformation is not only reflected through external spells of witchcraft for Circe but more powerfully with internal evolution.

For Circe’s visuals, I reached into the colors of the story and time period. The palette reflects soil and dirt, a timeless organic material and an archetypal ally of feminine power. Vanitas paintings were also an inspiration, they’re “a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death” popular in the 16th and 17th century. I chose food that would be available to the Mediterranean region and then explored historical depictions of eating for stylistic inspiration, which I found reliant on freshness and the magical nature of herbs. I used light and shadow to invoke a naturalistic setting.

Photoshoots

With defined themes and visual scaffolding, I left the other constraints to thrifting and time. I found wooden dishes and aged metal for Circe. I bought some colored green glass to carry the palette and add variety. For the Bell Jar, I studied table settings of the time and noticed also with working in fine dining for a bit of my life, that traditions don’t change that much. Like fine dining, traditions are only further embedded. So I went with classic white linens to further feature the food and its decadence. I found plates with gold edging and jadeite side plates to echo the greens. The wine glasses and glass were chosen to create added dimension in the shadows.

With props and food purchased, I worked from loosely outlined storyboards and an anticipation of unfolding in process. Solo photoshoots can be cumbersome and precarious especially when working with food. I had a hodgepodge of tables arranged on the sidelines holding extra props, boxes of food and rolls of paper towels along with extra utensils for styling.

Circe’s feast was on a long folding banquet table in front of my garage with the background held in place using tall boards. I set the table in line with the light and shadow underneath the trees as I hopped over lily beds. Bees and flies rested on the fruit every now and then. It was a full day. The spell work shoot that proceeds the feast was shot during the golden hour of the evening on the autumnal equinox. The light was breathtaking but moved quickly and made for a rapid timeline.

The Bell Jar was shot in my living room in front of a picture window with a strobe and a speed light. I asked my family to provide a constant clear runway from the living room to the kitchen. This was much harder than the other shoot because my sweet children flocked around - talking and talking and asking questions. The pandemic continues to create resourceful working solutions. Since I have little access to people, the few shots I wanted with hands used a tripod and a remote button with help to focus.

After the photo shoots and subsequent editing, I reached out to several reviewers for feedback. All had some tie to photography and or design. The reviews were helpful, forcing me to reevaluate some decisions I had made, reinforcing others, and broaching questions with myself about the project.

Some of the most resonant self-generated questions from the incoming feedback were: What are universal elements and how are they defined? Is this an assumption of homogeneous culture? Can one distill abstraction into a loose formula? What gives it authority and consistency? How can you clearly communicate what you want the viewer to take away without being explicit? How can I embed emotions in the visual? How can I structure a story and execute it as a strategy? Are the narratives broadly accessible? How can I plan to benefit from another’s experience? Are there formulas to convey narratives outside of tropes and universal heroes? How can we create fresh voices and build on them?

While some of my classmates’ had user tests, I began to implement the same concept for feedback. I planned a question control sheet to guide the interviews and better answer the questions I was generating. Some of the questions included were:
Do the ideas resonate?
Are they clear?
Do the photos depict the themes?
What would make this more accessible?
What is a question I should be asking?

Through these more guided and concise asks for feedback, I was better able to gain focused input for my end goal. The bigger questions fostered by the interviews were an important part of growing my work, even though they were cause for paralysis. The biggest takeaway from this paralysis was how to ascertain detours and build guardrails. The ever generating questions had to be checked against end purpose and goal. Earlier I mentioned the written thematic references that were used. These are part of a spine that became elemental to my process. I read about it in Twyla Tharp's book, The Creative Habit and then added my own uses. A spine is a place to always refer back to as a list of values, priorities and goals. It's a place to check and justify new directions or changes. Having a spine anchors the process and directs your energy and time.

The other most helpful piece was the steady support of my teacher and classmates. When the momentum seemend to be lost, they got me back on track. Having a talented group to keep the project directed and accountable is a privilege. They were my biggest resource.

In closing, this project was a milestone in working theories and mapping out process. It generated questions that needed to be answered not just for myself but for evolving strategies.