MENU is a Whole New Take on Food Photography
What’s on the MENU at the J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam cafeteria is truly inspired.
The agency’s chef Robbie Postma and visual designer Robert Harrison combined their love of food and photography in this unsettlingly beautiful photo-series that creatively examines the culinary process. MENU takes the viewer to the origin of a menu. According to the website, it’s about “not serving a beautiful dish on a plate. But raw, unprocessed ingredients. Served, the closest you can get to a chef’s mind, on his face.”
Each photograph was created without the use of photoshop or digital editing. Every grain of rice and every tiny coffee bean was attached by hand. Some setups took over nine hours of trial and error, with many of the action shots requiring multiple takes and meticulous resets. Overall the collection took more than a year to complete.
The photographs are a visual tasting menu: veggies, seafood, wine, meat, spices, starch, sweets, and coffee. Realised on Postma’s face, each category is presented is a surreal and discomforting way.
“The project was so rewarding in so many ways,” says Harrison. “It wasn’t just the photographs themselves; it was also being in the studio, experimenting, trying to achieve those results and finding new ways. to me, this was the most important thing about the project.”
See what else is on the MENU by clicking here.