Author: Ellis Stevenson

The food isn’t the first thing you notice when you walk through the produce section of any big supermarket—the lights are a bit too bright, the misters hiss on cue. The geometry is the problem. Bell peppers arranged in neat rows of matching red, apples stacked like pool balls, and cucumbers so homogenous they nearly seem artificial. That’s due to more than just taste. Architecture is what it is. An asymmetrical pepper is a problem in the produce aisle, which is a display designed to perform abundance. In a sense, supermarkets are as much a part of the image industry…

Somewhere in central California, a bruised pear that no one wants is sitting on a loading dock. It only has a tiny brown freckle close to the stem. It tastes good. It was grown, picked, and packed by the farmer. After looking through a spec sheet, a buyer from a chain of supermarkets concluded it wasn’t attractive enough. It ends up in a composter, cattle feed, or occasionally the ground. You begin to grasp the peculiar, unsettling economics of what is eaten and what is not when you multiply that pear by a few billion. That was meant to be…

The first thing that comes to mind when you walk through the production floor of a Parmigiano Reggiano facility in Emilia-Romagna on any given morning is not the smell, though it is noticeable—it is warm, sharp, and almost medicinal like aged cheese. The silence surrounding the rejection process is what gets to you. Wheels that have developed the incorrect weight, rind texture, or hollow sound when tapped are marked, set aside, and separated without ceremony. No one disputes. No one goes into great detail. The standard is known. Since the answer has not changed since it was negotiated centuries ago,…

The sizzler, which smells of char, butter, and something appropriately decadent, arrives at the table trailing smoke. In a dimly lit South London restaurant, two people are seated across from one another. Based on their careful attire and somewhat formal stance, it is obvious that they are on a date. One reaches for a phone before the other picks up a fork. The other is waiting. The food cools. Contentment takes over the moment. This scene is not uncommon. In actuality, it is now so commonplace that it hardly qualifies as unusual. Dinner’s true purpose changed when, at some point…

Almost everyone who has watched a lot of documentaries in recent years has experienced the moment when something in a frame doesn’t sit quite right. The light is too uniform. The movement of a crowd loops almost imperceptibly. A half-second is too long for a face to maintain its expression. You shake it off, blink, and continue to observe. However, the doubt has already surfaced and is persistent. It turns out that the quiet uneasiness is not paranoia. It is the perfectly reasonable reaction of a viewer gradually realizing that the agreement it previously had with documentary filmmakers has been…

After a vote like that, a certain kind of silence descends upon a nation. The silence of something incomplete, not the silence of resolution. The arguments continued even after 51.9 percent of British citizens decided to leave the European Union in June 2016; they simply shifted from television screens to living rooms, pub corners, and family dinners. It turns out that photographers were observing everything. During the four years between the referendum and the formal withdrawal on January 31, 2020, they recorded more than one story. There were dozens of them, sometimes painful, sometimes ridiculous, and frequently at odds with…

A photograph has most likely been around as long as cameras have. A door was left open. A chair withdrew from a table. A bedroom that was obviously used for sleeping before someone stopped using it one day. It turns out that absence is incredibly photogenic. And that’s exactly where the problems start with that photogenicity. In documentary work, taking pictures of what is no longer there—a missing person, a community that has been erased, the aftermath of violence or grief—has long occupied a challenging position. The pictures can be breathtakingly lovely. Additionally, they may be extractive in ways that…

Somewhere in a picture, there is a strawberry that has no right to be attractive. It has gray mold on it, is furry, and is getting softer around the edges, so no one would consider it food. Nevertheless, when carefully lit against a black background, it resembles a painting—rich, textured, and strangely alive in its dying state. It’s the kind of picture that compels you to look instead of scrolling. Which is the whole point, of course. For the better part of ten years, a small but expanding group of photographers has been discreetly gathering food scraps from the edges…

On a Saturday morning, you’ll notice something unexpected if you walk into any reasonably well-stocked grocery store with good lighting, a cheese section that smells like cheese, and maybe a small basket of heirloom tomatoes placed right next to the entrance. A twenty-two-year-old is holding up their phone and taking a picture of their shopping cart somewhere between the adaptogenic mushroom drinks and the oat milk. Not even a restaurant, not a meal, not their food. their groceries. Still in bags and clamshells, raw and uncooked. And they appear genuinely happy. You want to roll your eyes. However, it’s worthwhile…

Nowadays, practically every restaurant has a certain moment. When a still-steaming plate is delivered, phones emerge rather than forks. The lighting has been changed. The angle is examined. Someone squints and leans in closer, as though the food, if properly framed, might reveal a secret. Then a silent disappointment. It never looks exactly like the picture on the menu. The subtle but enduring discrepancy between what we are shown and what we are served is difficult to ignore. It’s also not coincidental. As it happens, food photography has been subtly altering, refining, and occasionally completely replacing reality for decades. FieldDetailsTopicFood…