A while back, during the wedding planning mania, I stumbled across the work of a couple of artists that really piqued my interest. I never got around to posting it, so I will now. Both were posted on yumsugar, one of my favorite daily reads.
The first of the two is a book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio. The premise of the book is something fairly simple but pretty astounding when all binded together. The artists photographed families around the world with the food they consume in one week. The amount of money they spent on the bounty is also noted in the captions.
While I do find the pictures fascinating, I can’t help but wonder how they picked the families. Did they decide to pick the family in Chad to prove a point of the lack of food in Chad? Is there not a rich family in Chad that would have photographed much differently? And what about the U.S. families? They seem to be middle-income. Was there not a lower-income family that they could have photographed?
Of course, this is why I need to go buy the book. Maybe they chose the most representative of the country as a whole to feature (i.e. most of Chad has a $1.23 to spend on food, and most Californians spend $159.18 per week). Or, maybe they took artistic liberties and showed families that would prove whatever point they wanted to make. I will only know once I search out this book and read it.
The other artist I discovered is like a mix of Cindy Sherman and Sandy Skoglund. Her name is Daniela Edburg, and she has some fantastical photos, mostly featuring food. In her series Drop Dead Gorgeous the subjects are consumed by the food, dying by an OD on MnMs, or being chased by a tornado of cotton candy.
It was refreshing to see this work. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at any art that has impressed me much — not sure if this is my fault or if there’s just been a lack of impressive art lately, but I’m glad this is changing for the better for me.
