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| Francine Zaslow: Food Cycles talk |
The Beltfish chases his silvery tail. He is the Mandala, the Uroborus.
Pillowy pigs feet so odd, delicate, fleshy, so unnervingly like our own. The cocooned sardine is blackened, staring blankly, wordless, peaceful, violent, ancient – accepting its place in the beautiful/horrible circle dance of eat or be eaten – an idea few of us in the West really digest. We are what we eat: our tidy cultural palette hides this from us by veiling our direct experience of life and death. Foods are cubed, shrink-wrapped, dyed and processed beyond any of these recognitions. Zaslow’s images, however, do not blink. Reminding, returning us to something elemental: we are still wild; we are as we have always been: brutal, true, unending connected to the arc of creation, disappearing as it does forever into our collective past, our past as ape, as fish, as bird, as food for worms.
Visual intimacy with food from cultures unfamiliar unearths their secrets: the way they see themselves, how they perform their unique ritual of eating, what they have to teach us about our estrangement from the “brutal” physical world: how no one apparently gets out alive. Zaslow captures these elemental forms without the perfume of color, without over-fancy technical garnish. They are a delicious, if somewhat disturbing mirror.
In fruitful collaboration with Zaslow, chef David Remillard and prop stylist Beth Wickwire bring their own depth of experience to the project. Remillard handles the food unapologetically, viscerally; Wickwire forages for food and objects that are texturally rich and striking.
Zaslow’s process has often involved the juxtaposition of disparate forms, delighting in exploring pairings of seemingly oppositional subjects, finding beauty where others might not think to look. Her camera has explored the underbelly of boxing and the women that seek out the pain and passion of this heavily male-dominated bloodsport. We see the hard hits, played against the curves and grace of the female form, unexpectedly fierce, placed in the line of fire. She’s composed images of men, dressed only in gold body paint, paired with metal objects like saw blades and ice picks. These are metallic man-sculptures: muscles of iron, graphic in composition, yet set against their subject’s soft and submissive expressions. And the twin ship idea informs her work here in the “Food Cycles” series, as she shoots her (deliciously) eerie black eggs and chicken feet, transforming them with lens and light into new visual treasure. -Tom Babbitt
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| Image by Francine Zaslow |
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| Lecture on November 17th with publisher David R. Godine out of Boston, MA. |
September 30, 2010 (Winchester, MA)__The Griffin Museum in collaboration with Book Ends of Winchester, presents a lecture by David Godine on November 17, 2010 at 7 PM at the Griffin Museum of Photography. The lecture is free but reservations are required as seating is limited. Please RSVP to 781-729-1158 or photos@griffinmuseum.org. The lecture will be followed by a book signing.
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David R. Godine, Inc. is a small publishing house located in Boston, Massachusetts, producing between twenty and thirty titles per year and maintaining an active reprint program. The company is independent (a rarity these days) and its list tends to reflect the individual tastes and interests of its president and founder, David Godine.