Political Step-by-Step - The Trump Card

Inspired by the media accounts of the fair-haired-Cheeto-headed candidate, we felt obliged to turn our industrial food skills to the art of portraiture...

He is a lover of diner fare and fast food grub, of overcooked steaks (“It would rock on the plate, it was so well done,” his longtime butler once observed) and the bland nourishment of Americana. He prefers burgers and meatloaf, Caesar salads and spaghetti, See’s Candies and Diet Coke. And he shuns tea, coffee and alcohol.   - New York Times

and

Donald Trump says he likes fast food because "at least you know what they are putting in it."Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, made the comment Wednesday [September 14, 2016] during a taping of "The Dr. Oz Show," where he discussed the results of a recent physical examination.   - The Hill

Step 1 - Quality Materials

Step 2 - Quick Sketch

Step 3 - Preparatory Drawing

Step 4 - Studio Lighting and Final Portrait

What this candidate is made of

Flour Tortillas: Enriched Flour (Bleached Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine
Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Shortning (Soybean Oil and Hydrogenated
Soybean Oil), Contains 2% or less of Leavening (Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Aluminum
Sulfate, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate), Dough Conditioners(mono- and Diglycerides,
Calcium Sulfate, Enzymes, L-Cysteine Monohydrochloride), Vital Wheat Gluten, Sodium
Propionate (Perservative), Fumaric Acid, Salt, Potassium Sorbate (Preservative),
Cornstarch, Soy Flour, Cellulose Gum, Wheat Starch, Canola Oil, Xanthan Gum
Microcrystaliline Cellulose.
Pik-Nik Original Shoestring Potatoes: Fresh Potatoes, Pure Vegetable Oil (Contains
one or more of the following: Palm Olein Oil, Safflower Oil), Sea Salt. No Preservatives.
Pringles: Dried Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (contains one or more of the following: Corn Oil,
Cottonseed Oil, Soybean Oil, and/or Sunflower oOil), Degerminated Yellow Corn Flour,
Cornstarch, Rice Flour, Maltodextrin, Mono, and Diglyerides, contains 2% or less of Salt,
Wheat Dextrose. Contains Wheat Ingredients.
Hostess Donettes (powdered): Enriched Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron
(Ferrous Sulfate), Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid], Palm Oil, Water, Dextrose,
Sugar, Modified Corn Starch, Soybean Oil, contains 2% or less of each of the following:
Nonfat Milk, Defatted Soy Flour, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Baking Soda, Sodium
Aluminum Phosphate, Egg Yolks, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil,
Artificial Color, Sorbic Acid and Sodium Propionate and Potassium Sorbate (to retain
freshness), Mono and Diglycerides, Dextrin, Soy Sechithin, Guar Gum, Cellulose Gum,
Karaya Gum, Annato and Turmeric (color), Wheat Flour, Enzymes, Glicerin, Citric Acid,
Natamycin, contains Wheat, Soy, Milk, Egg.
Baken-Ets Chicarrones Hot ‘N Spicy Fried Pork Skins: Fried Pork Skins, Salt,
Maltodextrin (Made from Corn), Monosodium Glutamate, Spices, Torula Yeast, Dextrose,
Onion Powder, Paprika, Natural Flavors, Garlic Powder, Artificial Color (Red 40 Lake,
Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 1 Lake), and Paprika Extract.
CHEETOS brand Puffs Double Cheddar Flavored Snacks: Enriched Corn Meal 
(Corn Meal, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Vegetable Oil
(Corn, Canola, and/or Sunflower), Double Cheddar Seasoning (Cheddar Cheese [Milk,
Cheese Cultures, Salt Enzymes], Whey, Canola Oil, Maltodextrin [Made from Corn], Salt,
Monosodium Glutamate, Artificial Color [Yellow 6], Citric Acid, Lactic Acid, Artificial
Flavor), and Salt. Contains Milk Ingredients.
CHEETOS brand Grid-Shaped Nacho Cheese Flavored Snacks: Enriched Corn Meal
(Corn Meal, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid),
Vegetable Oil (Corn, Canola, and/or Sunflower Oil), Nacho Cheese Seasoning
(Maltodextrin [made from corn], Salt, Whey, Canola Oil, Monosodium Glutamate,
Buttermilk, Romano Cheese [cow’s milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes], Cheddar
Cheese [milk, cheese cultures, salt, enzymes] Onion Powder, Natural and Artificial
Flavors, Dextrose, Artificial Color [red 40 lake yellow 6, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5] Tomato
Powder Spices, Sodium Caseinate, Lactose, Lactic Acid, Citric Acid, Sugar, Garlic
Powder, Red and Green Bell Pepper Powder, and Skim Milk. Contains Milk Ingredients.
CHEETOS brand Mini Puffs Parmesan Flavored Snacks: Enriched Corn Meal (Corn
Meal, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Vegetable Oil
(Corn, Canola, and/or Sunflower Oil), Parmesan Seasoning (Whey, Parmesan Cheese
[Part-Skim Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes], Salt, Maltodextrin [Made From Corn],
Skim Milk, Monosodium Glutamate, Natural Flavors, Sunflower Oil, Cheddar Cheese
[Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, Enzymes], Yeast Extract, Blue Cheese [Milk, Cheese
Cultures, Salt, Enzymes], Onion Powder, Citric Acid, Lactose, Lactic Acid, Spice,
Buttermilk, Artificial Color [Yellow 5 Lake] and Garlic Powder). Contains Milk Ingredients.
Australian Style Gourmet Black Licorice: Cane Syrup, Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat
Flour, Niacin, Iron, THiamin, Riboflavin and Folic Acid), Cane Molasses, Water, Corn
Syrup, Sugar, Food Starch Modified (Corn), Licorice Extract, Palm Oil, Caramel Color,
Glycerin, Soy Mono, and Digyceride, Potassium Sorbate Preservative, Anise Extract,
Salt. Contains Wheat and Soy Ingredients.
Chester’s Puffcorn Butter: Enriched Corn Meal (Corn Meal, Ferrous Sulfate, Niacin,
Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, and Folic Acid), Vegetable Oil (Corn, Canola and/or
Sunflower Oil), Cheese Seasoning (Whey, Cheddar Cheese [Milk Cheese Cultures, Salt,
Enzymes}, Canola Oil, Maltodextrin [Made from Corn] Salt, Whey Protein Concentrate,
Monosodium Glutamate, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Lactic Acid, Citric Acid, Artificial
Color [Yellow6] and Salt.

A Political Intervention by Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman

Publication QZ magazine June 2016

Quartz Magazine

Featured Processed Views in their online venue on June 16, 2016

"Junk food, in the name of art. Two US photographers are filling their carts with sugar-laden cereals, processed meat and fizzy drinks to create a new kind of American landscape photography: the “food desert,” literally. Inspired by black and white landscapes shot by 1860s photographer Carleton Watkins, Chicago-based duo Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman have created historic vistas out of 21st century materials. Their series Processed Views: Surveying the industrial landscape offers a Blue Mountain of Cake, a Cola Sea, a Fruit Loops River." (Cheng).

Publications - Processed Views 2016

Following the exhibition of our work at the Houston FotoFest Biennial in March, and the great people we met while doing the reviews at FotoFest, Processed Views was published in:

Changing Circumstances: Looking at the Future of the Planet  
This powerful book about climate change motivates new ways of thinking about our role within the natural environment and our connection   with the rest of the planet. Published by Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam and available from real and online bookshops.

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The New Yorker Photo Booth

"For their project “Processed Views,” which is currently on view in the exhibit “Changing Circumstances” at the FotoFest 2016 Biennial, the collaborators Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman have produced cheeky dioramas that pull Watkins’s iconic images brashly into the industrial modern world. Using all manner of highly processed foods—Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Coca-Cola, marshmallows, fleshy stacks of bologna—they recreated the photographer’s famous landscapes from Yosemite and other California sites as garish candy lands. A photo of the Albion River in Mendocino, California, becomes a milky pool snaking through rainbowed mountains of Froot Loops; the imposing face of Cathedral Rock, at Yosemite, is reconstructed as a heaping pile of white bread. Ciurej and Lochman first met at the I.I.T. Institute of Design, in Chicago, and have been creating work together for three decades, including previous projects that explore the intersection of the human and natural worlds. (For their project “Ponder Food as Love,” they made sensuous closeup portraits of fruits and vegetables nestled among human body parts: a cluster of grapes perched along the curves of a back; a plump fig resting on top of an eye.) They’ve said that “Processed Views” is intended as a “cautionary tale,” highlighting the cost of America’s industrial food production and “the seductive and alarming intersection of nature and technology.” (The New Yorker)

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Discover Society Special Issue with special guest curator Geof Rayner    

We contributed an essay to Imaging/Imagining Anthropocene

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ZoneZero: In Search of Lost Innocence: Landscape as Metaphor and Stage

We met Alejandro Malo at FotoFest and he featured Processed Views in ZoneZero’s beautiful blog from Mexico City along with the stunning work of:

Alejandro Malo (Director of ZoneZero): In Search of Lost Innocence

Rasel Chowdhury: Desperate Urbanization 

Marcus DeSieno: Surveillance Landscapes

Liz Hickok: Ground Waters 

Peter Steinhauer: Cocoons

Ellie Davis: Stars 

Abelardo Morell: Tent Camera 

Rebecca Reeve: Marjory's World

Jamey Stillings: Changing Perspectives

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Family Faith Food

Family Faith Food is a culmination of three online issues from Strant Magazine published over the course of 2015. Each issue considered family, faith, and food individually. Family Faith Food coalesces the three online issue into one print publication and reconsiders how the three topics inform one another.

Featured is the work of 27 photographers along with essays,
photo book discussions, and interviews.

Contributors: Saleem Ahmed, Sophie Barbasch, Samantha Belden, Aaron Canipe, Evelyn Cervantes, Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman, Sara Clarken, William W. Douglas, Jon Feinstein, Makenzie Goodman, Maury Gortemiller, Amanda Greene, Jesse Groves, Samantha Harthoorn, Dave Hebb, Shaun H. Kelly, Johnathon Kelso, Natalie Krick, Ian Mahathey, Michael McCraw, John & Emily O’Connor, Nathan Pearce, Bradley Peters, Anacleto Rapping, Aaron Turner, Milly West, Kay Westhues, Joel Whitaker, Brooke White, Tara Wray

Flavor University - Studies in Food Technology

We attended Flavor University on October 3 - 4, 2016. Flavor 101 was a professional introductory class designed to give all flavor enthusiasts a taste excursion into the food future. Impeccably presented and very thorough, we acquired baseline from which we could launch further research into the world of food technology after our projects, Enhanced Varieties and Sugar Geology. The class was designed and presented at FONA International, "where experts, teamwork and technology deliver a competitive advantage to you and your products. A place where honesty, transparency and confidentiality build trusting, long-term partnerships. A place where you are the focus of everything we do.

our textbook

our syllabus

Publication - Discover Society Magazine online

Thanks to Geof Raynor for an invitation to contribute to Discover Society Magazine online

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Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape
By discoversociety
 August 02, 2016 
2016, Articles, Issue 35 
Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman 

Growing up in the fertile agricultural center of the United States, we have witnessed great swaths of America transformed from an aggregation of small family farms to a vast agricultural industry. Today large-scale agribusiness and farming technology dominate the heartland. Home-grown and natural are no longer descriptors of our diet, they are marketing jargon.
In Processed Views: Surveying the Industrial Landscape, we revisit the landscape to interpret the seductive and alarming intersection of nature and food technology.
Throughout our collaborative work, we have turned to history as a source of inspiration to anchor and inform our research. Our constructed views look back 150 years, referencing the work of Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), whose iconic photographs honoured pristine nature and also documented industrial development on the frontier.
Watkins’ photographs from the 1860’s through the 1880’s record a critical time in the ongoing American debate between progress and conservation. His commissions for the nascent mining, timber, railroad and agricultural industries are classic documents of frontier exploitation. Yet his iconic and masterfully framed photographs of Yosemite Valley honoured unsullied nature and inspired the legislation creating the first National Parks. Referencing this work also acknowledges the persuasive role that photography plays in the formation of our historical beliefs.
The notion of Manifest Destiny, the belief that by special virtue, the American people were destined to redeem and remake all lands westward to the Pacific coast, informed the mindset of Watkins’ time. This widely held view gave license to the voracious use of resources and the imposition of industry onto the land. Historian Frederick Merk stated that Manifest Destiny was born out of, “a sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example…[and] generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven.” Unfortunately, from our present vantage point, redemption looks like a relentless drive for expansion, which has left indelible scars on our landscape.
Fast forward to the 21st century—we are pushing into another frontier. As our country moves further away from traditional sources of food, we are heading into uncharted territory with consequences for the environment and for our health. We came to Processed Views from a previous project about the emotional and physical energy flowing through the intimate act of preparing and sharing meals. The flip-side is how food consumption in America is now dominated by a complex, impersonal system of industrial agriculture, food processing and relentless marketing.
The ten photographs in Processed Views reflect components of America’s highly addicting, low nutrition, manufactured food diet: high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, salt, saturated fat, preservatives, artificial flavors and food dyes. We used manufactured commodities as our building materials, creating landscapes based on Watkins’ views. The carefully engineered colour palettes entice viewers into these bite-size landscapes.
While we have made great strides in “feeding the world,” we now recognize that despite increased production, there is enormous waste due to broken or illogical food distribution networks. There is clear evidence of the exhaustion and poisoning of the soil. Fast, cheap food has not made us healthier. The effects on the most vulnerable members of our society, those compromised by economic hardship, are evidenced in increasing obesity and chronic disease.
Have we oversold our technological commitment to bend the forces of nature in order to fulfill fantasies of a fun-food diet and our heroic expectations of feeding the world? We hope this work serves as a cautionary tale, encouraging us to re-evaluate our man-made utopia, extract lessons from the past, and pause to consider the consequences of our choices.

Exhibition - Rick Wester Fine Art

Exhibition - Rick Wester Fine Art  
June 2 –July 29, 2016 
Lost in Space: Contemporary Photographers and the New Landscape

Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman, Christopher Colville, Molly Lamb, David Magnusson, Diana Matar, Lilly McElroy, Aaron Rothman

June 2 –July 29, 2016
Rick Wester Fine Art
526 W 26th St #417
New York, NY

This summer RWFA is presenting a group exhibition featuring the work of eight photographers abstractly exploring the classic subject of landscape. Photographing the landscape is as old as the medium itself. As a universal subject it reflects the aesthetics, approaches and attitudes of each era throughout history. For the majority of its first century of existence, photographic landscape relied on the Romantic tradition of the 19th century. In the 1960s and 70s this began to shift as Western culture, wrestling with profound cultural changes in the Post-War period, such as Pop Art, mass media, consumerism and the Cold War, altered how artists depicted the world at large. In photography, many point to a single exhibition in 1975 for its growing influence. New Topographics, Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape held at the (then) International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY included work by photographers who shared a similar disassociated, sly, sardonic and decidedly anti-Romantic aesthetic including Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal and Stephen Shore. Switching out the grand Western vistas of Watkins, O’Sullivan and Adams for urban sprawl and endless concrete, photographers began to radically redefine landscape just as Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour did for architecture in Learning from Las Vegas in 1972.

Today’s generation of photographers, while cognizant of this pedigree, hold their work to no such didactic method. Lost In Space is a group exhibition reflecting some of the current trends in landscape photography, ranging from the lyrical to the dissonant, from the personal to the disassociated. Interestingly, none follow the tradition of using the photographic document as a self-referential means to its own end. Instead, photography is employed to convey a personal point of view, to support the photographer’s overt social condition or place of self in the world. Process plays an important role in many of the photographers’ efforts, including the invented image and the constructed tableau. Landscape, as a concept is more implied and subverted than clearly stated. If Nicholas Nixon’s statement in the original New Topograghics catalogue “The world is infinitely more interesting than any opinions I might have of it”, defines his generation’s position then one might take Aaron Rothman’s artist statement as its correlative: Straight photographs can’t quite convey the increasingly porous border between the natural and the artificial, between the real and the virtual.

 

Exhibition - On Landscape - #3

Exhibition - Processed Views Book

May 28- June 12, 2016

Our book Processed Views is part of Landscape #3 on display at: 
Lower Hewood Farm
Hewood, Chard
Dorset TA20 4NRR
Other book artists: Minna Kantonen, Dafrna Talmor, Emma Weiselander, and special guest artist: James Ravilious.

Research for Enhanced Varieties - Jell-O Transformed

Floral Transformations of the Japanese:   Japanese Jell-O artists make floral desserts that include actual flowers suspended in gelatin, pictured is the  exceptional specimen of Bavarian Creme by Tokyo based Havaro’s.

Pansy Bavarian Creme

Architectural transformation:  By mixing just a few ingredients, it is now possible to build with and eat legos! Known from Youtube's DIY channel, The King Of Random, Grant Thompson demonstrates how to make these edible legos with just a few ingredients and materials in this tutorial video:

Sculptural Transformation:  Mirror Marble Cakes By Russian Confectioner Olga are GASP-worthy, using a secret gelatine-based icing, that has gone viral on social media  (350K instagram likes).

Ingredients: 20 g Gelatin Powder, 120 g Water, 300 g Glucose, 300 g Sugar, 150 g Water, 200 g Sweetened Condensed Milk, 300 g Chocolate (White, Milk, Dark or a combination), Food Coloring
Steps:
1) Bloom the gelatin in the water
2) Boil the glucose, sugar & water

3) Remove from heat and add the gelatin
4) Add the condensed milk
5) Pour over chocolate and buerre mix to remove air bubbles
Use at 35C/95F.

Strant Magazine - Appetite Not to Scale

STRANT MAGAZINE
VOL 004; ISS 003  Fall 2015 APPETITE NOT TO SCALE
Featured work by Barbara Ciurej &Lindsay Lochman, Sara Clarken, Jon Feinstein, Amanda Greene, and Johnathon Kelso

"For those who understand photography as a language and therefore not capable of being an icon and a language simultaneously—for language is not usually considered a sign system—I would argue that photography is a branch of cognitive linguistics in that as a particular language it situates itself to a particular environment. The language of photography is the product of how photography is consumed"

Fruit Loops Landscape, from the series, Processed Views

Flavor Research - Museum of Food and Drink, Brooklyn

In an effort to move into the universe of research about industrial artificial sensory pleasures, we visited MOFAD. The current exhibition, Flavor: Making It and Faking It, presents the history of our love affair with flavor enhancement and MSG. Developments in flavor technology were in large part promoted and accelerated by war and industrial food preservation.
For further edification see:
Combat Ready Kitchen by Anastacia Marx de Salcedo and Ingredients: A Visual Exploration of 75 Additives & 25 Food Products By Dwight Eschliman With: Steve Ettlinger.

Flavor Tutorial

Lindsay at sniff identification station

History of Flavor Timeline

Exhibition - Eat This: A Socially Conscious Food-art Exhibit

EAT THIS

Gallery 51 - Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

MCLA Student-Curated Exhibition  March 26 - April 26. 2015  

Opening Reception: March 26, 5-7p

375 Church Street 
North Adams, MA 01247 
413.662.5000

photographs by artists Jon Feinstein, Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman. 

Eat This was organized by MCLA’s Advanced Museum Studies class, taught by Laura Thompson, director of education and curator of Kidspace at MASS MoCA. 

The class determined the exhibition should address issues surrounding food are complex, and not necessarily black and white. Students created an exhibit that would bring attention to the eating habits of most Americans. Poor food choices, stress, lack of access, finances and access healthy eating choices, various diet options, marketing and packaging of food, and the food industrial complex were all topics of classroom discussions.

Jon Feinsein, 23 grams from the series, Fast Food

"Feinstein scans fast food --  hamburgers, French fries and chicken nuggets -- titling them after the number of grams of fat they contain. His work investigates the love/hate relationships that Americans have with fast food."

Fruit Loops Landscape, from the series, Processed Views

Research -The Dorito Effect

Award-winning journalist Mark Schatzker discovers the missing piece of the food puzzle: flavor. Drawing on advances ranging from the brain science of food addiction to how plants communicate with insects, The Dorito Effect shows how we have interfered with a highly sophisticated chemical language that evolved to guide our nutrition. Evolution did not program us to get fat—we've simply tricked ourselves into craving the wrong foods.