Your skin, oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D’you know? For you I bleed myself dry
For you I bleed myself dry
— Coldplay, “Yellow”
This photograph doesn’t tell us much about the food it’s supposed to illustrate — the cheese-bacon stuffed tomatoes. It would be easy to miss them altogether amid the glaring yellow and white color scheme which seems to have been assembled by a stylist hell-bent on assuring that everything in this picture (apart from the sad-looking tomatoes) is brand spanking new.
That candle, for instance, has been so freshly lit the wick hasn’t even blackened down to the wax yet. There is nary a fingerprint in sight, and those linens still bear the folds from the packet they were wrapped in.
The brilliant lights illuminating the scene beyond the power afforded even by the sun can be seen reflected in the cruet set’s brushed steel and mock the candle’s flame pitiful weakness.
For the sake of following some rule about composition, the designers responsible for this image have inadvertently told more of a story about themselves and heightened, rather than lessened a sense of loneliness and despair when a meal is prepared for two. There is no family to muss things up; neither party is likely to be encouraged or satisfied with this meager offering, no matter how accessorized it is. The only green comes not from a salad or vegetable, but from a poisonous-looking plant.
Even the fork lacks tines, a trident lost at sea.
Quick and Simple Cooking for Two, Ideals Publishing Corp, 1976
Also from this book: Depth Of Field, A Feast For The Eyes
Also from this book: Depth Of Field, A Feast For The Eyes
