Breakfast

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Lunch

Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch Lunch

Dinner

Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner Dinner

How it began: I first began to participate in composting when I moved into my apartment last year. The building has a compost bin in our scary trash room. My property manager said that they personally hold their scraps in the freezer till they are ready to dump them in the bin. I was excited to include my own stash. At first I noticed people would dump their scraps in compostable green bags. At the time I hadn’t gotten any and thought I would transfer my scraps over to a bag later. In the meantime I began with a food storage container. The very first block I completed was “Breakfast” and little did I know I would be so fascinated by the sight of it as I removed it from the container. So of course I had to document it. Thus the commencement of a 3 course meal. In making the rest of the blocks, the idea of them being their own course didn’t actually come along till the editing process. Till this day I have only photographed these 3 blocks. Still life photography proves to be a difficult type of photography for me to really get into. I love capturing the souls of homes, that’s specific. I love capturing people’s personalities or stories amongst their messes, also specific. And these compost diaries are certainly their own niche. However, I quickly realized that I am one to eat the same things pretty often. I saw that I didn’t have much variety in ingredients to work with and so became bored. But perhaps that should serve as a challenge and not a hindrance. Or at least that’s the more positive perspective I have acquired after editing this series. I figured maybe I could be more intentional with scrap placements. I thought I could also allow myself to experiment with food coloring since I don’t want to include other stuff and waste food just for art purposes. Since the completion of this page I am happy to say that I have resumed storing my scraps with the goal of photographing the blocks. The editing process really inspired me. And the narrative I created in my head for the series was also fun to develop. Exciting.

The Process: For my set up I simply took a large matte board I had laying around in my studio. I took an x-acto knife and cut it to make a three walled box. I placed it on my drawing desk, placed my lights with diffusing umbrellas overhead and called it a day. Did I know exactly what I was doing? Not really. I stopped going to school when the next class was in fact going to be the Studio Lighting/Still Life photo class. From where I was standing, the set up was stunning, in World of Delirium style (A.K.A D.I.Y).

Months later, once I became bored, I had completed three sets. I didn’t know what the story would be yet so I just proceeded to edit, starting with one set (Dinner). I was editing to complement the colors present in the food and as per usual for my style, adding in some blues to the highlights. When I moved on to the second set I realized the blue highlights didn’t look as nice as they did on the “Dinner” set. So I let myself take the opposite direction instead, something warmer. It worked, I rolled with it, and somewhere in the midst of that I decided this was a 3 course meal and the 3rd set would also have its own preset. Breakfast is warm like when you are woken up by the sun rays peeking through your window. Lunch is magenta because, well I don’t know about you but snacking on fruit midday is class and the strawberry hats had such a presence on the Lunch block, I had to highlight them. And finally Dinner had a cooler tone, because night time makes me think of a blue moon. “Dinner” was the last block to be created and you could see how I was trying to bring variety into the series by adding water to the container and dumping tea bag messages in there too. Dinner looks like it’s trying to be soup. I loved the freedom I gave myself when it came to editing and satisfy my eyes with the different color flavors. I hope you enjoy it too.

The Story: When I look at this series and the layout of this journal entry I see the food diary of a person living in a post apocalyptic world in a rusty city. A melting pot of humanoids and cyborgs and robots and androids. Yes, definitely something from “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” or better known as “Blade Runner” for the non readers. Maybe it was the “Fifth Element” movie I had playing for background noise while I was editing. But just imagine being in the future and food will no longer really be food. Just these blocks that we pop into our mouths for nutrients that have been half assed to appear as regular human food since the adapters of these blocks aren’t even humans either. We’re a dying species you see. I hope the clothes in the future is cool.