Tag Archives: photography

SCENES FROM A KINFOLK STORY…

Posted on July 2, 2012 by popcornsnaps| Leave a comment

I’ve held on to these images by friend and photographer John Cullen for a long time — it’s time I shared his amazing work with everyone else, too. The images were outtakes from a photoshoot that we organized for Kinfolk Magazine last fall, for a story that appeared in their third issue. I’m thrilled to finally share these images now, in several parts.

This first set is from the pre-dinner prep — I enlisted pals to help get everything ready, like rinse pomegranate seeds, chop dill, cut bread, tear lettuce, pour drinks. Because John had to shoot early “to chase the sunlight,” as he called it, our “dinner party” was actually a luncheon. (We sat down to eat around 3pm — it felt weirdly glamorous to eat so early.) I think we cracked open our first bottle of wine around 11am, early even for my standards! It was chilly that afternoon, so I bribed people to stay out on the roof with bites of my homemade gravlax and special creme fraiche… so I don’t think anyone minded too much.

[All images by John Cullen]

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Posted in lunch, memory, party, people, photography

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AERIAL VIEW

Posted on May 25, 2012 by popcornsnaps| 2 Comments

 

It’s already so hot here in Montreal it’s hard to believe that there’s still snow somewhere in the province. I took these photos in the mountains near Charlevoix, only a month ago. We went on a helicopter ride — my first time! (it was a little scary; Adam would have called it a “soft adventure”) — and flew around the Charlevoix crater, which was created by the impact of a gigantic meteor over 15 million years ago. I was totally blown away with the aerial perspective — with enough distance, the macro starts to look like the micro in this crazy abstract way. Everything was reduced to a cellular level. It was really, really astonishing and beautiful.

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Posted in nature, outdoors, photography

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RAMPS IN THE MONTREAL GAZETTE

Posted on May 19, 2011 by popcornsnaps| 6 Comments

Last month I began working on the beginnings of a story about ail des bois, or ramps, for the Montreal Gazette, our city’s estimable daily newspaper.

I was so excited to write this story for a million reasons, the main one being a chance to go on a foraging adventure with Nancy and Francois, the rad, supremely talented duo behind wild foods restaurant Les Jardins Sauvages.

If you had a chance to see the print copy of the Gazette yesterday, then you saw the best part — three pages of crazy photos, full of color and inspiration and life. (I’ll try to scan in the photos later this week).

But all of the photos featured in the online slide show are different from the print version, and were from the photoshoot that I alluded to several weeks ago. It was such an honor and a thrill to have my humble food captured by a professional photographer. I’ve never, ever seen my food look so good.

The story also marks the very first time that my recipes have been published professionally. I can’t even begin to explain what that has felt like for me. I thought for so long and so hard about what recipes I wanted to share in the story. I wanted to make sure that they felt like me, that they were food that I make all the time, at home, for myself and for others that I love.

I solicited the ideas of my closest friends, including Sasha and Kathryn and Alison. They all had great ideas, but I realized that I wanted the recipes to represent me in a really honest and genuine way. The purple fingerling potato and fennel gratin pictured above? I was inspired by the exact same dish that I made for dear friends in Ithaca just last month.

I was really happy with the recipes I ended up developing: ramps vinaigrette (pictured above), ramps fregula, and ramps gratin. They’re all so easy to make and I am so happy to share them with you.

I’ll post outtakes from the photoshoot later this week — as well as my own shots from our foraging adventure in the Quebec woods! But in the meantime, I’ll save my two favorite photos for last.

These aerial shots were a collaborative idea between me and John, and I really love how they turned out. They remind me of a Dutch still life, a table spilling over with food. Aren’t they insane?

Read the full story here.

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Posted in announcement, color, food, memory, nature, outdoors, people, photography, spring, work, writers

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COMEY SCAPES

Posted on March 13, 2011 by popcornsnaps| 2 Comments

I already own the pants, and these tops are just as perfect. I’d like them both, please. It’s like embodying these landscapes, or being the woman in these photos. Beautiful work by Rachel Comey, as usual.

[via Frances May]

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Posted in art, design, photography, shopping

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DESCRIPTION OF THE SUN

Posted on July 5, 2010 by popcornsnaps| 2 Comments

Many thanks to Little Lamb for sharing images from Mimesis (Die Natur erzeugt Ähnlichkeiten – La Nature produit des Ressemblances), a photo series by German artists Barbara & Michael Leisgen. Bodily themes and land art and grainy traces of German Romanticism come together quite powerfully in this early 1970s series — also their first.

Barbara Leisgen’s silhouette is set, and leaves its fleeting trace in landscapes; the actions involve stretching out her arms to follow the contours of undulating countryside (the Paysage mimétique and Mimesis series), or to include the sun in an arc drawn by her arm while she is seen from behind in the centre of the image (Die Beschreibung der Sonne – Description of the Sun_). While this last title, like a later one (_Writing of the Sun), harks back to the Greek etymology of the original ‘photograph’, the ‘heliography’ of Nicéphore Niepce, from ‘helios-graphein’, writing with the sun, it is conditioned by the human will framing it. This is not merely imitating nature through its gestures; it describes, in the sense of tracing, and channels it as well.

Text from Collection FRAC Lorraine, via Little Lamb. I love how she lingers around the countryside, how the contours of the hills come in contact with her shape in such a meaningful and healing way. I love her skewed body language and the lopsided geometry of her limbs and the hills and most of all I love so much how empty and still the images become once she leaves the frame. She sublimates the role of tourist in these amateur landscape shots with her back to us, with her shaman posturing, in communication with the natural and spiritual world.

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Posted in art, photography, portraits

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MOMENT OF ABSOLUTE ECHO

Posted on May 16, 2010 by popcornsnaps| 2 Comments

Korean photographer Jungjin Lee takes photos that are macabre and deeply textural and even a little dramatic. They have a slightly enigmatic, narrative quality to them. I think they are extraordinary. I love the idea of wind as a ‘character’ — after all, Woman in the Dunes of one of my favorite movies ever. From Aperture Foundation:

Known for her laborious, textural photographic process, Lee brushes liquid emulsion (“liquid light”) onto the surface of handmade mulberry paper. The texture of the paper and the gestural marks of the brush stroke create a unique painterly effect, which is beautifully reproduced in this, Lee’s first trade monograph.

Wind captures the ethereal quality of its namesake in a series of landscapes dominated by windswept expanses and foreboding cloud formations—panoramas that reveal an adventurous spirit, yet resist casual entry. Man-made objects, such as a dilapidated school bus, an old ruin whose ceiling is open to the sky, or wind-blown prayer flags, frequently appear marked by powerful, invisible elements. Metaphors for an internal state of being and the forces that shape it, Lee’s Wind landscapes are imbued with an elemental vastness, at once powerful and serene.

Liquid light! From Lee:

The images in the Wind Series represent my introspective states and thoughts. Out in the field, in the forest, or in the village, I am ready to press the shutter release when the scenery stirs my emotions and imagination. This moment of ‘absolute echo’ within myself travels through infinite time and space. That is, ‘Wind’ becomes my energy of free spirit. Vanishment and transformation. Sadness – yet another change. Wind is invisible and it contains more of inner thoughts than an actual fact or a definition. I don’t try to make my definite direction of wind in my works. That is why I like the title Wind. They are just landscape pictures…

[Images from Aperture Foundation via American Suburb X]

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Posted in art, photography

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STUDENT OF THE EARTH

Posted on February 6, 2010 by popcornsnaps| 2 Comments

“Most elementary geological truths are best discovered and explored where geology is—in the field—while looking at the evidence…. We take a step toward this ideal by using photographs of localities that might be visited and, so far as practicable, treating these scenes as prime sources of information.” -John Shelton

Last summer I saw an incredible retrospective of aerial photographer (and La Jolla native) John Shelton’s work at the San Diego Natural History Museum. Besides this exhibit, it is very hard to find any other information on him. He took photographs for textbooks (he wrote the indispensible tome ‘Geology Illustrated’), but his work is uncommonly evocative for school textbooks, I think.  His work reminds me of Canadian photographer Eamon Mac Mahon, who has also shot for reporting/documentation purposes.

“Unlike most aerial photographers, Shelton flew mostly alone and never had the luxury of using a viewfinder. He maneuvered his low-winged airplane to align his large-format camera through a small, open window to optimize the angle, lighting, and composition of each geologic feature. Originally, his exposures were made with a handheld light meter, but eventually he determined his camera settings from experience.”

Shelton’s work:

“Since 2004, Toronto-based photographer Eamon Mac Mahon has spent up to three months of each year working in the wilderness of northwestern Canada and Alaska.  These slow journeys via bush plane have allowed him to intimately photograph remote landlocked communities, and the vast areas of uninhabited land surrounding them.” [Via Bau Xi]

Mac Mahon’s work:

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Posted in art, photography

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