大胃口系列摄影 / Christopher Boffoli

哇，食物上的小人国！妙趣横生，童心泛滥。
来自西雅图的摄影师，作家，艺术家和制片人Christopher Boffoli 。

Christopher Boffoli他在过去的十几年中一直将摄影作为自己的爱好，后来因为一个小小的
契机，将其作为全职职业。他的作品得到美国，加拿大，以及欧亚各国的画廊和私人收
藏。2013年的6月6日—7月13日，他在纽约进行个展。秋季新书发布。
非常感谢hristopher Boffoli将项目介绍和项目图片授权gooood发行。
Appreciation towards hristopher Boffoli for providing the following description:
Photo © Christopher Boffoli

NYC show:  June 6-July 31 at Winston Wachter Fine Art, 530 West 25th Street, NY
Big Appetites book coming:  Fall 2013
Fine art prints represented for sale by galleries in Seattle, New York, Toronto and
London.

Christopher Boffoli is a Seattle-based photographer, writer, artist and filmmaker.  He
took up photography as a hobby in his teens, honing his skills as a student journalist in
high school and college.  While still an undergraduate he started his own commercial
photography company in Charleston, South Carolina.  With a background in literature
and English, he worked for more than a decade in the field of Philanthropy, raising
money for elite schools like Dartmouth College and the London School of Economics. 
Christopher was able to integrate his creative skills, in writing, photography and graphic
design into much of his fundraising work.

A couple of life-changing events compelled him to pursue a creative career full-time.  As
a resident of Lower Manhattan, Christopher was a firsthand witness to the World Trade
Center attacks of September 11th.  A few years later he was very seriously injured at
high elevation while mountaineering on Washington’s Mt. Rainier.  Since that time he
has traveled the world, setting foot on six continents, writing and photographing his
travels through documentary photography and video.  At home in Seattle, he works as a
writer and photojournalist, producing both feature stories and covering breaking news. 
Christopher’s work has been published – online and in print – in more than 95
countries.  His fine art photographs can be found in galleries and private collections in
the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia.

这是Christopher Boffoli极富盛名的“大胃口系列”。小小人物在正常的食品世界，戏剧性的
欢乐对比让人想起大小人国历险记。微小模型与食物的系列组合可使来自任何文化背景的
人们都找到自己熟悉的用品，食物或者回忆。让人会心一笑。 Christopher Boffoli也爱逛
农贸市场寻找灵感，在经常阴天的西雅图巧妙的利用光线进行摄影。食物大多是真实的，
也不过多依赖后期处理。这一切就是一场真实的盛宴。

小小人儿在大大食物旁富有哲理性的行为让人忍俊不禁，食品的世界果真是真的存在吗？
如果在我身边出现是什么样？会很棒吗？一定很棒！

Here is the more information form http://bigappetites.net

Genesis

The genesis of my Big Appetites series of fine art photographs was in a lot of the media
I was exposed to as a child.  There were so many films and television shows that
exploited both the dramatic and comedy potential of a juxtaposition of different scales: 
tiny people in a normal-sized world.  It is a surprisingly common cultural theme going
back all the way to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels in the 18th century and perhaps
earlier. 

I think it is especially resonant with children because as a child you live in an adult world
that is out of scale with your body and proportions.  And you constantly exercise your
imagination around a world of toys that are further out of scale.  As a child I was an avid
collector of Matchbox cars, a model railroader and a builder of models (cars, ships and
airplanes).  I was fascinated, as many children and adults are, with tiny, meticulously
detailed things.

When I began shooting some of the very earliest images in this series around 2003,
food was a conscious choice as one of the components of the work as it can be very
beautiful – in terms of texture and color – especially when shot with available light and
macro lenses.  Combining what are essentially food and toys makes the work instantly
accessible to virtually everyone.  Regardless of language, culture and social status,
almost everyone can identify with toys from their childhood.  And whether you eat with a
fork, chopsticks or your hands, everyone understands food.  Sitting down to a meal
makes us feel most human.

The sensual experience of eating accesses primal instincts that stretch back to the
earliest days of our evolution.  Whether we are reflecting on the comfort food of
childhood, celebrating food’s tremendous diversity, or obsessing over calories and
nutrition, cuisine is one of those rare topics that most people can speak about with
authority and yet largely without controversy.  So the choice of food as a backdrop of
the environments of the Big Appetites series is certainly calculated.

Reaction to the Work

Usually, the initial reaction to the images in the Big Appetites series is a response to the
humor.  People imagine the possibilities of standing next to a towering piece of
chocolate cake or an Oreo cookie large enough to serve as a raft, floating in a glass of
milk.   But I hope the deeper effect is to compel the viewer to look more closely at the
world around them and to consider deeper truths about our relationship to the food that
sustains us but also that we crave for comfort.

I’ve heard people see these images and say, “I wish I could live in a world with oversized
patisserie.”  But the truth is that excess overwhelms us and turns us against what we
think we love.  Consider an exercise in which we’re presented with the scenario of being
on a deserted island and having to choose just one of your favorite foods to eat for the
rest of your life.  In most cases, the thing we would name would be something of which
we would tire quickly.

Inspiration

Beyond my exposure to and knowledge of the tiny figures from childhood, one of the
works that inspired this series was a project called “Travelers” by the brilliant artists
Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz  (http://www.martin-munoz.com).  They used a palette of
the same scale figures and created dioramas inside snow globes.  Some of the scenes
could be whimsical or romantic.  But what I especially liked were the darker ones that
were fairly disturbing.  This work was also influenced by some large dioramas by the
Chapman Brothers that I saw at the Saatchi Gallery in London back in 2003. They used
hundreds of hand-made figures in rather disturbing and horrific battle scenes.  It was
somewhat hard to approach (which I think is a good thing and something art can and
should do to challenge us) but wonderfully executed.

In the time since this work has gone viral, I have become aware of other artists who
have been working with similar concepts and even some who have even worked with
small figures (and sometimes food).  Though I was not aware of these artists at the time
I commenced work on this project, it does not surprise me that others are exploring
similar ideas as, again, the elements of food and toys are the most common things to
many people.

Work Process

The set-ups come from a very natural place.  I’ll usually start with the food, observing
what’s in season at the farmers market, considering what I’ve shot before.  Or I think
about iconic American foods, like Oreo cookies or Twinkies, and how an image of those
things might tap into someone’s early memory (or current closet addiction/supermarket
guilty pleasure).  I also consider how I can populate those images with figures with a
context that makes sense.  By now I have quite a little community of figures that I use,
and I keep adding to the arsenal all the time.  So that’s a big factor: finding a clever
match for what I want to shoot.  These images look simple but can be tedious to set-up. 
I’ll often try to do multiple set-ups over a few hours.  Some go quickly.  Others take
longer.  I’ll work out lighting and depth-of-field.

There is a certain corner of my studio that I tend to use for this project.  We have a lot
of overcast days here in Seattle so it has marvelous, diffused light. I try to use available
light as much as possible, though if I’m still working in winter as the evening approaches
I’ll very rarely set up a couple of off-camera slaves to add light. Sometimes a set-up just
doesn’t work the way I had hoped and I’ll change the orientation of the background
and/or the figures.

The figures in this work are all hand-painted and their meticulous detail is a big part of
why the images work.  On occasion I’ll re-paint or modify figures to suit my purposes. 
They’re designed to be glued down so they don’t stand on their own.  The trick is
getting them arranged.  A lot of food is soft so I can use a toothpick to make a small
hole into which I can insert one of the feet.  Other times I use agave nectar or a
proprietary putty to get the feet to stand on hard surfaces.

Most of the process is enjoyable, from getting the idea, or seeing a food product – that
would make a good  backdrop –  to actually setting it up in my studio and shooting it
while I’m rocking out to music.

Other than some light and color adjustment, the images are not heavily manipulated
with image processing software.  The food I use is even totally real.  Especially with
commercial food photography there is a lot of cheating, for instance, using white glue in
place of milk or glass cubes instead of ice. But I don’t really need to cheat with the food
either.  It is not always something you’d want to eat at the end of the shoot.  But it is
real.

Captions

The images have a strength and a personality of their own.  But they are most often
exhibited with captions that lend an extra bit of energy to the concept, and of course,
often reinforce the laugh.  For instance, one of the more popular images from this
series is the man spreading mustard on the hot dog.  And the caption reads:  “Gary
always uses too much mustard.  But no one can say so.  It’s a union thing.”  So you
have this image of a food that is often associated with the simplicity of backyard
barbecues and Americana, and there is a problem that belies a greater complexity.

A more recent image is of a rotund man alone against the French fry barricaded riot
police and the promise of something great if he can just get by.  The caption: “It was the
precise moment that Larry knew those advanced judo lessons would pay off.”

So it adds an element of surprise and humor that things aren’t simply as they appear. 
That he might actually have a shot at the burger. Hopefully it gives the viewer a laugh at
the expectation of events that may have followed. And again, it challenges the veracity
of our first impression.

MORE:  hristopher Boffoli