SAD

A Commentary on the Standard American Diet

This project arose out of walking into my home office one day and finding a box of pizza that had been forgotten in a corner, now hard as a rock, but clearly still a pizza. It sparked a curiosity about how highly processed foods age; Are they still identifiable as food? Can we even call it food any longer? If what we consume to nourish our bodies can’t even be called food, finding this pizza frozen in time, then, prompted larger questions about the connection between the things we eat and our health. 

The T. H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University reports that the proportion of American adults considered obese has grown from 15% of the population in 1990 to 36% today, and fully 69% of American adults are currently considered either obese or overweight. Most experts attribute this rise in weight gain over the last several decades to an ever increasing reliance on processed foods, driven by more and more sophisticated marketing campaigns paid for by big multinational food companies, coupled with less and less physical exercise. 

In this series, I focus a lens on aspects of the food industry and obesity, by turning the genre of food photography on its head. By creating images placed on my set for several days, I explore the illusion of desire as it relates to food photography and advertising. I seek to walk the fine line in portraying what is edible, and what merely appears to be so. Bon appetit!