Exhibited at Feast for your Eyes at The Photographers Gallery, London, 2019.
Concept by Louise Haggar and Allie Wist. Words by Allie Wist, photographs by Louise Haggar, food styling by Michelle Gatton, and set design by Alexander Breeze.
Consumption has often lent itself towards conspicuousness. A reversal from an act which assimilates a substance inward, to one which projects the substance back outward. Eating becomes a culture and class exoskeleton of what is otherwise a biological process, one through which we simply gain “nourishment.” Of course, eating has moved much beyond its necessary function, and has perhaps always been, at least in part, a cultural act for humans. Eating is the first way that we physically consume emotion and meaning—it is our earliest method for accessing the stories of our ancestors (and of learning new stories about our futures). Recipes hold within them deep undercurrents of who we are and who we hope to be. To nourish others is to assume this responsibility—to build access to the histories, ecologies, and futures embedded within food. Nourishment can be seen as a way to render accessible the many threads of meaning held within a mother’s humble bowl of congee, or encased beneath the cellophane of a ceremonial gift basket. When we create ritual and tradition around food, we unfold deep lineages and connections spanning time and space.
Many of the dishes that we hold dear are not meant to be beautiful nor conspicuous, and meals which truly feed and sustain us will not necessarily pander to the glamorous aesthetics proliferated in visual culture. To value food only for its ability to win our eyes does not truly respect the act of consumption as a fundamentally ancient, sensory and ritualized act.
This series of photographs offers a riposte to the hyper-consumption of visual food which has come to dominate our cultural appetite. A collection of foods which are comforting, nostalgic, and intimately tied to Earth—foods that nourish us and support the future of our planet, foods which lie beyond their value as images. They are imperfect, unglamorous, deeply meaningful objects, which bridge the gap between our bodies and our values. The images recreate food altars and food traditions we learned from our families; we foment new ones to reflect values of environmental responsibility, waste reduction, and sustainability. Can we learn to cherish potable water as much as any other time-worn symbol of prosperity? Can we assert a ceremonial reverence for preserved and foraged foods? Nourishing others will always be seated within history and culture, and as we pay homage to nostalgic traditions, we may also watch our eating rituals evolve into new habits, which serve to acknowledge our ancestors, our bodies, and our planet.
Gifts that we ingest impart both the sentiment from the giver, as well as nourishment to our bodies. In leiu of prioritizing only the most aesthetically appealing fruits in a ceremonial gift basket, we look to celebrate foods that might otherwise go to waste, embedding an environmental awareness into this act of love.
Humans have been eating bone marrow since prehistoric times, and using bones to make stock or broth dates to at least the second century BC in China, making it one of our most ancient nourishing foods.
Concept: Louise Hagger & Allie Wist
Text: Allie Wist
Photography: Louise Hagger
Food Styling: Michelle Gatton
Set Design & Prop Styling: Alexander Breeze
Photo Assistant: Sam Reeves
Retouching: Darkroom
Troy, NY + NYC