Chloe Leung Final Project Proposal

1. Concept/Subject 

For my final project I would like to capture food and peoples relationship with food. The reason I am interested in doing something along these lines is because I love food and cooking/baking. I think that the way people interact with food that they love and the time they spend making food for people or family to enjoy is a true act of love that I would like to explore capturing through photography. I think I am mostly interested in experimental work for this but also some performance work to really emphasize emotion. 

2. Technical Approach (input) 

Because I am mostly interested in shooting cooking progress or people with food most of that happens at my house with my family. So scenic and location I am currently thinking of limiting it to that but I do think that there can be some creative motion blur and softness to the images to give this warm feeling. During the PoV assignment I tried using my 50mm lens and I might experiment with using that lens more to keep the feeling as if the viewer of the images is with is in the room and also enjoying the food. As for color temperature I am indecisive about if I want warm to get a warm and inviting feeling or if I want it to be cool to get a calm feel but I think I am mostly leaning toward warm. For color I think it depends on which end the photos artistically want to lean towards in the end. I also think it might be worth trying out black and white in the post production just to see the dramatic effect it would give the images. 

3. Technical Approach and Specs: (Output) 

I think I would like these photos in the end to be like a mini series within each other kind of dedicating a few images or process if cooking or take out to the enjoyment. I think that these would work best as prints vs projections because I want them to be taken away from the digital feel and emphasize the physical enjoyment of food.

RESPONSE FROM REBECCA:

Chloe,

Thanks for this descriptive proposal. You’ve made such sensitive and compelling imagery of your home and family so far this semester, so zeroing in on their relationships to food and each other is a great idea. Curious about whether you started the process over the holiday.

The use of the 50mm as a visual unifying force and a way to bring the viewer into the scene is a good idea. I wouldn’t worry too much ahead of time about color temperature in the post-production; I think you can try a variety of different things and let the the images guide you, based on the individual shooting conditions. Your idea related to the tactile quality of prints is a good one. While you’re confined to the digital space for now, knowing that you imagine them printed eventually will help me to guide you through the post-production.

Have you seen the film Big Night (1996) by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci? It’s a beautiful narrative about a restaurant that has some of the most sensual and descriptive depictions of food and cooking I’ve ever seen on camera. Since you love food and are now interested in capturing food and cooking through a lens, it’s worth a watch. While it might be more mannered than what you’re looking to do, check out JP Terlizzi’s The Good Dishes, which your designer’s eye will appreciate, and which also considers the relationship between food and family. Douglas Adesko’s Family Meal is another long-term project that features the family table. While much of her work focuses on affluence and the trappings of wealth,  Tina Barney‘s Theater of Manners is comprised of large format images of her extended family in their homes. The tone may be more emotionally claustrophobic than what you’re looking to make, but she has an amazing ability to describe complex relationships by placing family members together in a tight frame, and is an important photographer to know. On the other side of that coin is British photographer Nick Waplington, who made similar candid images of family–in this case, living in poverty–in his 1991 series The Living Room. He later decided to destroy that series of prints but it still exists as a book. Roe Ethridge is a photographer whose work straddles commercial and fine art aesthetics, and he’s done some amazing things with food (though those images are scattered among various projects and editorial assignments for throughout his career). Rinko Kawauchi is a photographer whose work I think you’ll appreciate, and she’s made some beautiful images of food over the course of her career as well.

I think something that you’ll need to consider is how wide-ranging you want your approach to be. Do you imagine mainly candid images? You might experiment with a wide variety of approaches to start, including describing movement and energy through slow shutter speeds (as you described), and trying very constructed and/or playful still life images. I would be inclusive at the outset, and then follow the paths that seem most fruitful. Looking forward to seeing what you make.

-R