Your mother told you not to play with your food. Photographers, like the rest of us, have found the temptation irresistible. and who could blame them when manufacturers invented foods that visually beg to be played with?Jell-O (1923) by Paul Outerbridge is a busy swirl of tromp l'oeil; it takes a moment for the eye to register what it is looking at. The stripes etched in glass, the moulded gelatin pyramid are a visual pun, a precursor of Photorealism in painting. Janet Fish, perhaps.
The white circles, arranged like some ancient ceremonial menhirs, turn to out be Lifesavers cand
y. Invented in 1912 by an ingenious American candy maker as a "summer candy" that wouldn't melt as chocolate does, the little preserver-shaped discs have entertained chldren and adults for almost a century. Ruth Bernhard (1905-2006), a German-born photographer, is less well known than Outerbridge. Like so many feamle artists, Bernhard has been hidden in plain sight. She was the photographer who produced the first ever catalog published by the Museum of Modern Art for its exhibition The Art of the Machine in 1934.
4 comments:
I've got a great whole grain bread, ham, cheese, lettuce and basil leaf sandwich in front of me that I would love to take a photo of but I'm too hungry to stop eating. Summer candy? Too sweet! (get it? too sweet?)
Jeanne, if you haven't yet seen "Play With Your Food" by Joost Elffers, I bet you'd like the book. Think: Edward Weston, but with a silly sense of humor.
I would hardly say that the work of Ruth Bernhard is not well known in the world of photography. Her prints sell for thousands of dollars, and she is especially known now for her classic work with the nude figure. Look for her book "The Eternal Body."
Despite her figure work being her best known, this photograph of Lifesavers candy may be my favorite image of hers due to its marvelous use of shadow and light. It reminds me of a review I had read of an exhibition of her work back in the 1990's. It was obvious to me that the writer had not seen any of the photos, as this particular photo was described as a photograph of life preservers!
The work of Paul Outerbridge is less known to me than that of Ruth Bernhard, and I have never seen the jello photo before. It too is marvelous.
Thank you, Dave, for your comments. I don't follow art sales, so this is new information about Bernhard. Paul Outerbridge gets cited quite often in recent discussions of photography because of the overlap between commercial and art photography. That's an academic discussion. Also, The Getty Museum has a large collection of Outerbridge's work and they are very good at using a varieity of media to make their collections known. In my experience, European museums and governments are much savvier about promoting their cultural patrimony. In France, when you are unemployed, you can get free admission to public museums, theaters, etc., as a way to keep people involved in public life.
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