Picturing Food

I attended a Zocalo lecture in January featuring the editors of Gourmet Magazine. Zocalo's next foodie event looks equally fascinating. It will also be moderated by Evan Kleiman, host of public radio's Good Food. And again this event requires preregistration online, so I am posting it far in advance of the actual date. The last event I attended was held at the Skirball, but this will be at the Getty Museum, in conjunction with an exhibit opening.

THURSDAY, APRIL 08, 2010, 7:00 PM

From the event listing:

Photographers have turned their lenses on food since the invention of their art. Early images captured simple, soft arrangements that showcased seasonal bounties — fruits and vegetables in vases and bowls, like still-life paintings. Photographed table settings — whether elaborate or bare — evoked not only taste and appetite, but the experience of a meal, the process, the drama, the company. Shots of markets captured commerce and abundance. Decades later, technological and aesthetic advances transformed the food photograph into its own art that set off all the senses: images seemed soaked in color, close-ups clarified individual grains, and the food — even as it was coated in chemicals — seemed more palatable than ever.

As the Getty opens its exhibit, "Tasteful Pictures,” featuring food photographs from the Getty collection, Zócalo invites a panel of experts — including Artbites’ Maite Gomez-Rejón, photographer Charlie Grosso, and Gastronomica founding editor Darra Goldstein — to explore the origins of food photography and why we like to look at what we can’t eat.

If you go:

The Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA

Parking is $15 per car, free after 5:00 p.m.

I didn't have enough guests last time to warrant doing a pot luck, but that still sounds like fun to me, so let me know if you want to get together before the event by leaving a comment on the blog.