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Craig Gordon.  Pandemic: The Unmasking of America.  A Photo Documentary in Three Scenes.

The book is self-published but available on his website.

I heard about the book when Craig, whom I’ve never met, sent me the pdf and asked for a blurb.  The book isn’t about food politics directly, although he mentions it—and me—in the context of the section on Rebellion.

Thanks to food heroes like Joan Gussow, Marion Nestle and Karen Washington, may Americans are aware of the nutritional deficiencies inherent to industrialized foods, the plague of food deserts, amd inspired to join movements for locally-grown foods.

We now understand that profits for Big Food collide with health concerns of Americans, especially for poor, inner-city communities.  No irony that the explosion of chronic metabolic diseases from consuming processed foods—particularly impacting black and brown communities—have been the underlying drivers of most Covid deaths.

I was happy to do a blurb for this book:

That Craig Gordon finds so much beauty and strength in America during this devastating viral pandemic is reason nough to hope that some good will come out of it.

The photographs are stunning.  What he has to say is worth reading.  Check out his website.

Thanks to “babka101” for sending this link to the landscapes constructed of food and photographed by Carl Warner. This slide show comes with explanations of how he did it.

I’ve been reluctant to post all the photos sent recently of clever food sculptures and carvings, mainly because they typically arrive without attribution. But today’s New York Times has a worthy account of this kind of food art, with links to slides of work by various artists. And then there’s the video of James McMahon carving a portrait of James Beard – “the father of American gastronomy” – on a watermelon.

Mystery solved, thanks to Dawn, Renata, and Bix.  Renata sent a link to a description of Warner’s work along with more photos.  Bix sent a link to an interesting BBC program about this work.  Carl Warner has his own website, of course, but also has been a frequent subject of blogs.  This is the first I’ve heard of his work so I am glad to know about it.  He should be credited every time the  photos get e-mailed, especially because it was so easy to find out whose work it was. Thanks to all!

These made-with-food photos were sent to me with no indication of who constructed the scenes or took the photos.  I think they deserve credit and attribution.  Does anyone know where they came from or who did them?  This situation reminds me of the unattributed photos flying around the Internet that come from Peter Menzel’s and Faith D’Aluisio’s prize-winning book, Hungry Planet.  I recognize photos from it immediately because I wrote the introduction to the book.  If you see photos of people posed in front of everything they ate in a week, they have been lifted from Hungry Planet.  So what about these?