© Sid White-Jones - ‘Apples in a Porcelain Basket’ - Sharon Core.
Curated by Susan Bright and Denise Wolff, ‘Feast for the Eyes traces the history and effect of food in photography, simultaneously exploring our appetite for such images while celebrating the richness and artistic potential of one of the most popular, compulsive and ubiquitous of photographic genres.’
Within my practice I am constantly influenced by both early and contemporary examples of still life photography. This exhibition showcased a selection of images that have had a profound effect on my work in the past, some of which I have never had the chance to see before in print, like the piece ‘Early American - Apples in a Porcelain Basket’ by the American Artist Sharon Core.
© Sid White-Jones - ‘Untitled 49’ - Laura Letinsky. (Instillation View)
© Sid White-Jones - ‘Perrine, Florida, November 11, 1977’ - Stephen Shore.
The exhibition featured a vast range of work, all of which detailed the different representations that food takes on within photography when it becomes subject matter. The work on show looked back within history to be able to juxtapose old-fashioned portrayals of food with the more contemporary. Feast for the Eyes also brought to light the amazing breadth of imagery that the photographic medium has produced in the short time since its inception, by composing a mix of painstakingly styled early black & white studies opposite digitally altered contemporary experimental pieces and situating well known works such as Stephen Shore’s ‘Perrine, Florida, November 11, 1977’ next to un-authored photographs shot in the 1970’s for the simplistic covers of everyday cookery books.
© Sid White-Jones - ‘Untitled’ - Holger Niehaus.
‘Crossing public and private realms the works on show evoke deep-seated questions and anxieties about issues such as wealth, poverty, consumption, appetite, tradition, gender, race, desire, pleasure, revulsion and domesticity. Encompassing fine-art and vernacular photography, commercial and scientific images, photojournalism and fashion, the exhibition looks at the development of this form and the artistic, social and political contexts that have informed it.’
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