Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants, Bars and Chefs. - Feast for the Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography

Admit it. We’re a culture of obsessed food lovers who spend far too many hours staring at pretty food pictures. If you’re at saturation point and ready for a palate cleanse, take a look at “Feast for the Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography.”

Tim Walker, Self-Portrait with Eighty Cakes, 2008; from Feast for the Eyes (Aperture, 2017) CREDIT: TIM WALKER

Susan Bright’s “Feast for the Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography,” is the first book to cover food photography’s rich history― as fine art photography, as well as commercial and scientific photography and photojournalism. Her commentary and the photographs bring incredible insight to the subject as she traces the progression of the genre, featuring artists from all eras like Roger Fenton, Nickolas Muray, Edward Weston, Irving Penn, Stephen Shore, Laura Letinsky, Wolfgang Tillmans, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Martin Parr.

This essential food photography primer starts with the 1840s and works its way up to the present. Even though it seems like we’ve never been so into taking pictures of food as we are now, take one look at Wladimir Schohin’s 1910 portrait of a boiled egg, and you’ll recognize the forerunner of your friend’s filtered breakfast Instagram in autochrome, an early method of colour printing.