During Paris Photo and until November 26, 120 pictures competing for awards at the International Festival of Culinary Photography (FIPC) are being exhibited at the Carrousel du Louvre(see 10 pictures of the 2012 edition under the theme “the egg” here).
Following in the footsteps of Alain Passard, Thierry Marx, Guy Savoy, and Pierre Gagnaire, the honorary president of FIPC’s fifth edition will be Frédéric Anton, three-star chef at the restaurant Pré Catelan. In 2010, Anton was the president of a similar festival organized in Oloron-Sainte-Marie in the South of France (see pictures here). For BLOUIN ARTINFO, he answers three questions about the role played by photography in contemporary culinary creation.
Why are you so passionate about culinary photography festivals?
In 2009, a book called Anton, produced by Chihiro Masui and Richard Haughton, an extraordinary photographer (see images of the book here), featured ten years of my cooking at Pré Catelan. This book has become a reference particularly because of the photographs: the staging was very simple, products shot on a black background, but they were perfectly showcased. Something really happened between Richard and me, we didn’t have to talk, each of us brought his knowledge. When I saw the results, the way the pictures had been staged, shot, reworked, I understood all the work behind it. Had he not been here, my dishes wouldn’t have looked the way they do. I began to feel greatly interested by it.
So photographers play a very important role in culinary creation?
Indeed, cuisine, like music, is an ephemeral art, our creations exist, then they vanish, the plate is empty, the tune is over. Only our imagination can help us sing the song again, or remember how good the dish was, because of this or that ingredient. Music needs scores, recordings; cooking needs recipe books, photographs, texts, to keep the knowledge alive.
Especially today, because the visual aspect of dishes has become so important?
The visual aspect has always been important, even if there was less attention paid to it, because the most important thing in cuisine is the taste, this mustn’t be forgotten! When you simply put on a plate a pretty asparagus, with a bright, glossy green color, this is very nice, but what does it taste like? On the other hand, when the same asparagus has been simmered, basted, glazed with juice, it becomes very tasty, but the color turns to brown, and is not as shiny as before. Nowadays dishes are colorful, you see extraordinary plates, but sometimes they are not good taste-wise.
