Small World, Big Bite
The big picture painted through smallness and sprinkles.
Here’s a paradox: Thanksgiving is supposed to be about gratitude for what we have, a kind of humbling appreciation of our blessings, but somehow me manage to turn it into a celebration of gluttony.
Photographer Matthew Carden’s Small World collection offers a particularly timely poke at the irony. Just a cool bunch of macro photographs on the surface, the project actually digs deeper with a more thoughtful exploration of our dichotomous relationship with food — part necessary play therapy, part unnecessary excess and wastefulness.
Carden is also working with the Slow Food Foundation on a fascinating project to save the Gravenstein Apple, one of the last foods grown by farmers who truly nurture their crop from tree to table.
The collection both captures the labor-of-love production process that puts food on our plates and reminds us of our own smallness in the natural world that we so freely take from.
Plus, we’d just love to slalom down a sprinkles-covered hill.
- RELATED ARTICLE: Incredible Edibles: 5 Coolest Food-Related Concepts
- Birdseye Visionaire How one Bulgarian photographer's 8-year flight is challenging our relationship with nature and the environment....
- Hodgepodge of Cool | Incredible Edibles The 5 coolest food-related concepts out there that give "food for thought" a whole new meaning, from the aesthetic to the bizarre to the world-changing....
- What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets Fascinating project tells the global story of our relationship to food through portraits of 80 people from 30 countries and the food they eat in one day...
- Strange Worlds: Miniature Condiment Landscapes Spicy aliens, furry fields, and how a domestic accident can spark creative genius. There’s hardly a greater feat of creativity than portraying something ordinary through something mundane, to a cumulative effect of pure whimsy. That’s exactly what 26-year-old artist Matthew Albanese does in his fantastic — literally — Strange World...
- Catch of the Day How a clever guerrilla campaign is pushing the sustainability agenda across North American beaches....
[...] work reminds us of Matthew Carden’s Small World series of miniature food landscapes, with a hint of David Trautrimas’ Habitat [...]