Customer Reviews

Photographing Food as Art: Inside the Studio-kitchen of Fred Maroon With Master Chef Jean-Louis Palladin

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I misread the info and was expecting a book, rather i received a vhs tape which honestly did not provide any clear ways to photograph food. It was self induldent and boring. My first product that i bought from amazon that iwas not happy with!

This is a quasi-documentary shot near the end of the three-year collaboration between chef Jean-Louis Palladin and photographer Fred Maroon... some 20+ years ago. The result of their collaboration was published in 1989 as "Jean-Louis - Cooking With The Seasons" - a coffee table book of highly-style food.

While Palladin was a phenomenal chef and Maroon was a very competent photographer, this is not a film about how to photograph or style food. Rather it is largely an informal dialog between the two friends shot while Palladin is cooking in the studio's tiny kitchenette (using his intuition rather than recipes to create the artful meals). Palladin would literally show up at Maroon's studio with a box of food and cook a meal. Unlike much modern food photography which is styled for the camera rather than the palette, the food was cooked for consumption -- and Maroon often ate as soon as he stopped shooting (can't blame him for that).

There are cutaways to Palladin's assistant who explains her role in creating the recipes for the book after the photographs were shot. There is also an interview with Jeffrey Bigelow who created the 12 acrylic "plates" used by Palladin. Occasionally, Maroon describes his lighting and shooting strategy (basically, shoot as many frames as you can before the lettuce wilts or the sauce glazes over). There are a few interesting minutes for those photographers trying to decode the use of grids over acrylic.

When measured by contemporary standards, the greatest value will be for students of the 1980s lifestyle, those interested in creating culinary art and those looking to understand the history of food photography. If you have ample resources, buy it. If you're a student, borrow a friend's copy if you can.