The sound of the machinery never quite stops in a North Yorkshire vegetable processing plant. Bright inspection lights flicker against the metal walls, conveyors hum, and carrots rattle across steel rollers. A machine somewhere along that line is tasked with the straightforward task of determining which vegetables are worthy of being seen by customers.
It feels oddly clinical to watch the process take place. For a brief moment, an optical scanner examines the shape of each carrot as it passes underneath. Vegetables that are perfectly straight go on. With a blast of air, the crooked ones—split, twisted, slightly bent—are ejected and disappear from the main line almost immediately. The rejected carrots seem to vanish before anyone really notices them because it happens so fast.
Photographer Tim Smyth started to notice something strange in that tiny moment, which is repeated thousands of times every day. The machine appears to be making artistic choices as opposed to practical ones.
Smyth, a Bristol native who went on to study photography at the London College of Communication, has always been interested in the little things that are often missed in daily life. His art frequently straddles the line between silent observation and documentary photography. His photographs contain still lifes, but they hardly ever seem staged in the conventional sense. Rather, they appear to have been found.
He might have been drawn to the North Yorkshire farm where the rejected carrots were piled up out of curiosity.
Smyth reportedly thought the shapes were almost alien when he first saw them. A few were divided like branches. Others wound around invisible impediments found underground, such as stones, roots, and pieces of straw. Some were inadvertently humorous in ways that might cause a viewer to pause before laughing because they resembled odd anatomical shapes.
He wasn’t particularly impressed by the hideous ones, though. They were almost ordinary carrots. Many appeared to be perfectly edible, albeit possibly a little uneven or crooked. As I watched them being sorted, I quietly realized that the main reason these vegetables weren’t accepted was that they didn’t look good.
Smyth drove them back to London after gathering as many as he could carry.
He photographed them in his studio for almost twelve hours the following day. The carrots started to change in appearance when exposed to gentle lighting and stark white backgrounds. When taken out of the context of supermarkets and farming, their shapes took on a sculptural quality. One curved like the arm of a dancer. Another, twisted like a modernist metal sculpture.
It’s difficult to ignore how quickly perception changes when context is lost.
Eventually, the images served as the inspiration for the 2013 photobook Defective Carrots. Numerous meticulously crafted photographs of vegetables that never found their way onto store shelves can be found throughout the book. According to reports, some viewers thought the images were funny. They were called strangely beautiful by others.
It seems that both responses are accurate. After all, one of the most visually controlled products in contemporary commerce is food. Stacks of perfectly straight carrots, rows of identical apples, and strawberries arranged in tidy plastic trays are all examples of supermarket consistency. Customers are reassured by that consistency. Furthermore, it obscures the vast diversity that nature truly creates.
That hidden diversity is subtly revealed by the vegetables that were rejected.
For years, food waste activists have noted that farmers grow far more crops than is necessary due to appearance standards. Unsatisfactory produce frequently becomes processed ingredients or animal feed. Some never make it to customers. It is evident from looking at Smyth’s photos that the system is partially motivated by aesthetic standards rather than dietary requirements. And those standards can be extremely stringent.
Movements urging people to purchase “ugly vegetables” have emerged in North America and Europe in recent years. Imperfection produce is now cheaper at some supermarkets. Though it’s still unclear if the campaigns will permanently alter consumers’ purchasing habits, they have garnered attention.
One gets the impression from watching these arguments that Smyth’s photos were a little ahead of their time.
There was never any overt politics in the project. The pictures themselves continue to be serene, almost clinical. On a white background is a carrot. Beside it, another lies twisted into an unlikely curve. No dramatic remarks. Just a remark.
However, it gets more difficult to ignore what those images suggest the longer one looks at them.
It turns out that the system doesn’t always look for beauty.
After losing their market value, the rejected vegetables start to feel strangely respectable. They bear remnants of the soil in which they were raised, the challenges they faced underground, and the minor mishaps that molded their ultimate shape. Strangely enough, those flaws convey a more complex tale than the perfectly straight carrots that are neatly stacked in supermarkets.
And maybe that’s the project’s subtle lesson. Things rarely grow in straight lines in nature.
