12/8/12 6:23 PMLaura Letinsky’s Food Photography - NYTimes.com

Page 1 of 3http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/arts/design/laura-letinskys-food-photography.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

October 9, 2012

Giving Leftovers a New Place at the TableBy CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

“People want perfection, even if it’s a falsehood,” said Laura Letinsky, who is both a fine-artphotographer and a professor at the University of Chicago.

She could be talking about the long-running debate over women’s fashion photography, but Ms.Letinsky, a slender-armed and fast-talking 50-year-old pixie of an artist, has taken the discussioninto a different realm: food.

Just as some fashion photographers have turned away from airbrushed images of clear-skinnedmodels and cloudless blue skies, Ms. Letinsky has an aversion to photographs of flawless weddingcakes wrapped in fondant or scenes of dining rooms set for the type of orderly dinner party foundin British period dramas.

Instead she depicts crumbling, half-eaten cakes and tablecloths stained after a raucous meal. Dirtyspoons, empty cantaloupe rinds, half-eaten lollipops and clumsily cut slices of bread are her trade.Her pieces, she said, explore “the problem of the illusion of perfection.”

But in recent years, more magazines whose photography Ms. Letinsky would seem to conflict withhave been seeking her out to shoot for them. Ms. Letinsky’s images have already appeared in BonAppétit and The New York Times Magazine, but more surprisingly, she has been hired by MarthaStewart Living and Martha Stewart Brides, which would seem like publications that would want toeradicate her messes with a Miele vacuum and a Swiffer.

Even Brides, a magazine that would presumably want to present images of serenity and order, ranin its July issue Ms. Letinsky’s photographs of table settings. In these pictures macaroons are half-eaten and abandoned. Teacups and bowls are askew, and party organizers have hastily tiedtogether a mishmash of silverware. The associates who work with Ms. Letinsky on these magazinepieces seem tickled by her chaos.

“I love it,” said Jeffrey Miller, a freelance stylist who worked with Ms. Letinsky on the Brides shoot.“It’s just her. It’s very personal. The point of good art is to stir emotions. All of the tiny details in

12/8/12 6:23 PMLaura Letinsky’s Food Photography - NYTimes.com

Page 2 of 3http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/arts/design/laura-letinskys-food-photography.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

those pictures, she’s very, very aware of. It’s not random, really. It’s really very thought out.”

Dana Cowin, editor in chief of Food & Wine, said that while she had not worked with Ms. Letinsky,she had hired photographers like Anna Williams and Marcus Nilsson to add more discordant foodimages to her magazine’s pages. She finds that readers are more open to them.

“In many ways our eyes have been adjusted, and we see imperfections as a beautiful thing, like withan heirloom tomato,” Ms. Cowin said.

Ms. Letinsky, who grew up in Manitoba, said her interest in food sprouted from her fascinationwith still lifes, which she said were overlooked and considered as “B movies” of their time. Herbook “Hardly More Than Ever,” which features photographs taken from 1997 to 2004, presentsimages of scattered cake crumbs; rinds of a blood orange whose juices have caked onto porcelain;and a chocolate bunny whose turquoise wrapping has been peeled off and his head bitten off. Theyare incomplete stories, and viewers are left longing to meet Ms. Letinsky’s missing revelers.

“I want the pictures to have a kind of tension,” she said.

Ms. Letinsky’s ambivalence toward perfection is mirrored in her personal life. She is a fan ofMartha Stewart’s perfectionist aesthetic. She grows her own vegetables. She makes her ownvinegar, sourdough and even her own pottery. But she emphasizes that her home is far fromperfect. Ms. Letinsky, who says that people’s possessions are “very revelatory of who they are,”described it as an “amalgam of Ikea, things found in flea markets and stuff I spent way too muchmoney on.” Her butcher block kitchen counters are laced with “stains from beets and cherries andwine being spilled.”

Even her two sons bear out her dueling views of perfection: Her 14-year-old is “such a slob,” whileher 4-year-old is “a reorganizer” who “hates the feel of anything icky.”

In Ms. Letinsky’s latest exhibition of 10 still lifes at the Yancey Richardson Gallery through Oct. 20,she reflects more deeply on the conflicts that she and other photographers face in this quest forperfection. She constructed three-dimensional collages from pictures of food she clipped frommagazines and some of her own photographs.

She then placed the images against white backgrounds, which adds a depth and simplicity, andphotographed them. An orange, a honeydew slice and a half-eaten peach congregate haphazardlyaround a platter. Cutouts of bacon, ice cream parfaits with chocolate sauce and a panini comminglehappily.

12/8/12 6:23 PMLaura Letinsky’s Food Photography - NYTimes.com

Page 3 of 3http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/arts/design/laura-letinskys-food-photography.html?pagewanted=all&pagewanted=print

But are viewers ready for these images that take their perceptions of magazine photography oneconfusing step further? Yancey Richardson, the gallery’s owner, said visitors had warmed to Ms.Letinsky’s perspective. One gallery visitor on a recent Saturday afternoon said Ms. Letinsky’s workreminded him of how it feels when his garrulous brother, a surgeon, comes for dinner.

“There’s a lot of psychological freight in her work,” Ms. Richardson said.

Some magazine editors aren’t convinced that readers would care as much for her work. That freightisn’t for everyone. Vicky Lowry, executive editor of Elle Decor who has profiled Ms. Letinsky andbought one of her pieces, said that while “food photography, in particular, has gotten veryexploratory and experimental,” it was a different story for shelter magazines. She said magazinesweren’t prepared to show readers the flaws that come with a real home.

“You’re not going to have wrinkles on the bed or electrical wires showing,” she said.

Kristin van Ogtrop, managing editor of Real Simple, has debated for years with her photodepartment about whether to hire Ms. Letinsky and whether her work fits with the magazine’sspare and orderly style.

“She’s a huge fan of our photo department, and she is someone whose photographs I would like tohang on my wall,” said Ms. Van Ogtrop, adding: “They tell a really interesting story. But it’s not astory we tell in this magazine.”

MORE IN ART & DESIGN (1 OF 52 ARTICLES)

An Art World Gathering,Divided by MoneyRead More »