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

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

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

Pierre Javelle and Akiko Ida: The Minimiam Universe

Akiko Ida and Pierre Javelle combine photography, magical landscapes, culinary backdrops, and portraiture to create settings inhabited by diminutive characters, referred to as minimiam. Each diptych reveals to the viewer a whimsical land that plays with our minds, as well as the subject. Akiko, Japanese, has always been attracted to the world of gastronomy. As a child, she invented tiny characters that populated her journal. She is a renowned food photographer. Akiko has participated in more than 30 cookbooks and her work is published in international magazines. Pierre, French, grew up on comics. He is published in major gourmet magazines and his still-like photographs appear in corporate commercials.

The MINIMIAM project morphs multiple genres of photography, including microphotography, culinary art, portraiture and landscape. The action, ranging from sporting scenes to warfare, takes place in carefully staged, fantastic, food settings. In each work, the first image introduces toy-like actors in an ambiguous setting. The second panel reveals the scene’s totality, to an unexpected, often amusing end. Though generally light-hearted and playful, the artists’ work intelligently probes fundamental questions of human perception, and how meaning is constructed and manipulated through images. 

Sophisticated photographic devices form the core of the artists' expression, which both entertain and unsettle the viewer. Using extremely short depths of field with very small apertures, the miniature characters are sharply in focus, while the surrounding landscapes are blurred. At the same time, their diminutive size contrasts with the gigantic surrounding space, allowing the viewer's eye to freely wander around the entire scene. Stage set lighting silhouettes the actors adding drama to the story, and intensifying the textures and colors of the edibles. Our appetite is piqued.

(http://madelynjordonfineart.com/exhibition/focus/pierre_javelle_and_akiko_ida_the_minimiam_universe)

Processed Views at Expo 2015 Milano - Feed a Different Imagination

The nutrition and the resources of our planet are issues of vital urgency. For this we decide to focus on the themes of 2015 Universal Exhibition ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’, and to launch our own campaign ‘Feed a Different Imagination.' The campaign is free and open to all photographers who want to contribute to inspire our need to deepen and discuss these issues. This initiative is designed by Expo 2015.

On Processed Views:

Processed Views interprets the frontier of industrial food production: the seductive and alarming intersection of nature and technology. As we move further away from the sources of our food, we head into uncharted territory replete with unintended consequences for the environment and for our health.

In our commentary on the landscape of processed foods, we reference the work of photographer, Carleton Watkins (1829-1916). His sublime views framed the American West as a land of endless possibilities and significantly influenced the creation of the first national parks.  However, many of Watkins’ photographs were commissioned by the corporate interests of the day; the railroad, mining, lumber and milling companies. His commissions served as both documentation of and advertisement for the American West. Watkins’ images upheld the popular 19th century notion of Manifest Destiny – America’s bountiful land, inevitably and justifiably utilized by its citizens.

We built these views to examine consumption, progress and the changing landscape.

(http://www.expocampaign.com/post/129274936191/barbara-ciurej-lindsay-lochman-processed-views)

Processed Views on Lenscratch

We appreciate you kicked off the Lenscratch Collaborative Exhibition with our Processed Views.

In light of tomorrow’s Collaboration Exhibition, I thought it to be appropriate to share some collaborative work.  Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman, from Chicago and Milwaukee respectively, have been collaborating as a team for over thirty years.  Through this process they explore unified interests that strengthen their conversations and ideas between each other.  Collaborating as a way of making photographs always poses questions of leaders and button pushers, but in the case of Barbara and Lindsay they develop and divide work evenly.  Whether shooting together or separately, depending on the project, they always regroup to edit and exhibit together.

Today I’m excited to share their project Processed Views, which I have been privileged to see behind the curtain.  Through constructed landscapes made strictly from foods that make the chubby kid inside me drool, Barbra and Lindsay develop a commentary on today’s food culture and its digression from all things natural.  These handmade models are elaborate creations, holding their own as not only photographs but also sculptures.

Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman  began working together on photographic projects when they met as students at the Institute of Design in Chicago. They have developed an extensive body of collaborative work, chronicling rites of passage and documenting the psychological landscapes and social architecture that surround us.  The confluence of history, myth and popular culture is an ongoing theme in their collaborative work.

Exhibiting nationally and internationally, their photographs are in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Walker Art Center and the Milwaukee Art Museum. Ciurej is a photographer and graphic designer in Chicago. Lochman is a Milwaukee-based photographer and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin.
Thanks, fellow photographer and Lenscratch editor, Grant Gill.

Processed Views on Our Age is 13

Thank you, Molly Been, for this post in Our Age is 13 blog.