AD5807 Documentary Perspectives
Photographing the life of a chef
Ideas for the book
Plan A
In this project I am going to take photos of a kitchen in The Botanist cause I have constant access to there, the photos will not be food photography but instead will focus on the chaos of the kitchen specially in rush hours, lives of the chefs and the struggles of a restaurant depending on how things will go.
I will try to create a balance between the joys of being a chef and the struggles that come with it and will take a wide range of photographs from the different staff. (mainly the prep chefs, KP, Manager, Junior sous chef and the grill chefs)
If I face any issues that will stop me from doing this I am going to try to focus on the whole of the restaurant and tell a story of the challenges that the restaurant is facing.
Research
While looking for some influences for making a photobook a lot of famous photographers similar to Paul Strand came up and the common feature in their book was the fact that they shared landscapes and portraits in their pages and usually had double pages where the two photos related to each other. After seeing this I will try to do something similar in the book that I will create.
Sadly I was unable to find specific examples similar to the idea I have for capturing the ‘life of chefs’; so the first step moving forward will be for me to try and find some examples.
However, I did try to look at multiple photographers work and books to try and get some ideas on how to create my own photobook.
David Hobby
In his photographs David Hobby uses a lot of hard flash that helps with creating atmosphere in his photographs.
Jonathan Thompson
A photographer who has photographed chefs at work
Capture moments
Paul Winch Furness
A photographer who has photographed resturant kitchens
Seeing different peoples views and angles can be good.
Letaief Slim
A photographer who has captured a wide range of facial expressions within his photographs.
I think it is a good idea to take some points from him to increase the feel of my photographs.
Barbara Probst
The reason I looked at Barbra's images is her attention to details and how she is able to use those details to create a story.
This is something that I will also try to do within this project.
matthieu gafsou
I saw Matthieu's photographs at the PhotoParis; the main thing that intrigued me in his photographs was looking at his different projects through time and seeing how different they are but mainly seeing how his photographs areoften effected by his feeling cause the subjects are personal to him which is something I am also trying to do with my work.
While doing research about creating a photobook I also looked at a wide range of photobooks and got some main ideas from them; one of the main books I looked at was called "عمامه داران" "Turbanltes"
Behzad Jaez
In this photobook Behzad has captured the lives of the people who are religious students. He has managed to capture different parts of their day and explores their lives within his book.
I will take a lot from him and try to capture the same type of narrative within my work.
Working in the kitchen
Initial Idea
While doing this project I felt something more than just a photographer; as photographers we are usually seen as bystanders documenting the events from the side; in fact, in order to create an unbiased truth that is usually needed. However, when it comes to this project, I felt like I was involved with my subjects more than what is commonly expected this was mainly because I knew the people personally and have worked alongside them so to me this project is more than just photos, it is my relationship with the life of a chef. A personal story that might be seen as bias but an inside view, nonetheless.
I have tried to capture the life of chefs from an angle that is not commonly seen; the expectation of a chef is usually that they are always under stressed and work so hard that it is even a common occurrence for them to go towards drugs to calm them down and that they are usually in a bad mood; but the moment that work calms down the chefs are always having fun in almost a childish way, messing with food and making odd gentures. it is not certain if this is the resault of the environment or not but my view is that it is a way of dealing with stress. Either way it is important to know that eventhough stress is something that chefs are familiar with they do also know how to enjoy themselves even when at work.
Something that personally came to my mind while taking these photos was the ‘sad clown paradox’; not as a mental disorder but as a way to use comedy to cope with negative feelings including but not limited to stress. From what I saw existence of comedy and “messing around” was a very interesting incident which puts a lot of things in perspective even outside of work. We’ve all heard the saying “people who are hurt smile the brightest” but even though it is at times seen as a bad thing I personally believe that it is a healthy way to deal with stress and is indeed a sign of strength.
Photographs
Trying out different layouts
Creating the book
While creating the book I approached a lot of problems but was able to solve them, one of the main issues was the different moods I captured in my photographs that were not the smae as I had planed, therefor my plan for how this photobook was going to go changed multiple times during the project and in the end I ended up with trying to capture a eunique andle that I dont think has been explored enough.
While using blurb I learnt that creating a book or at least creating the layout using indesign was far easier than the university had made it out to be which was a surprise and when looking at my fellow course mates and the issues that they faced I understood that the university's teachings have only confused people and made even the simple things difficult. And even when I myself faced an issue they were not able to help me, this originally was dissapointing but I think it helped me with seeing a bigger picture and understanding that I should rely on myself instead and therefore I learnt my own way around creating the book.
Something that I was thinking about when creating this book was to try and approach it professionally and even trying to publish it afterwards but then realised that publishing the book is more difficult than what I originally expected and trying to approach uni and asking for help proved to be unhelpful since they did not know or were not willing to share their knowledge since publishing was not part of the course; this was another dissapointing thing but I ended up trying to find my own networks and after talking to people realised the importants of the first published book. There for I will only see this submittion as a prototype mainly for the grade and will continue my project after the submittion for an extra couple of months and will try to publish a professional and a deeper version of this project on my own outside of the university.
Initial Evaluation of pictures and the project (similar to the exhibition)
For this project I started photographing chefs of a restaurant while they were on their shift. Working with them and knowing them personally allowed me to approach from an angle that is not the most common when it comes to this subject. In some ways it was a good thing because it gave me a unique point of view but at the same time, I could see that there were times where I got distracted from my original plan and got so called “too close to the subject” to be able to see all of the angles. The original plan was to photograph the different aspects of a chef’s life, but it changed throughout the weeks that I was shooting the images because of the consistent types of images that I had taken.
I can say that even though the project did not go as originally planed I am happy with how the images turned out and I think I can make them work pretty well. I had a wide range of images so choosing only was proved to be a bit hard, but I managed to choose two that I think go very well with each other. On of the images chosen was of two of the chefs in the kitchen and it is simply my favourite image within the series, it showed the chefs having fun, in a way that is not the most common and can even be seen as a bit too far depending on the viewer but I think it captured the idea I was going with very well; using comedy to cope with stress, you can see that the chefs are having fun but you can also see that it’s not the common type of fun that people might originally think of and this uncommonness of it tells a story about how there might be something wrong behind the smiles and the laughter. For the other one I decided to choose a portrait instead of another landscape and chose the image of the person singing into the mop, which was chosen because in my eyes it followed the theme of “messing around during work” but it was much tamer than the first image so I thought that they would work very well together when seen side by side.
Something that I was sadly unable to do was shooting in a stressful situation when the chefs were at their busiest shifts but sadly, I was also working on those shifts and some of the chefs did not want their photos taken and I know for a fact that I would’ve been unable to capture the images that I wanted to without get in their way. So safely I had to pass on that even though I know it would’ve helped a lot with the series; However, I do think that I did gave up too quickly and I might revisit this in the future with the plan to explore this aspect of the job from behind the lens.
It might only be me, but I think my images showed my connection with the chefs and me being close to them could be seen when looking at the photos captured. I am unsure if this is also the case when other people who do not know me see when looking at the images, but I do think it is a positive thing.
In the end I can say that I am happy with how the images turned out and that they were sharp enough to be printed large. I managed to capture the idea that I wanted, and I am happy with the way that the images look and believe that they are aesthetically pleasing. The only thing I wish I could work more on was to capture more images from the different angles for example the chefs outside of their shift or even in their houses but I was unable to do this because of the time it took me to take the images the way that I wanted to and only being able to choose two images didn’t give me enough space to present the different angles and even though I originally thought that having contrast between the images would have been a better approach I am happy with how it turned out both because a big contrast might have distracted the viewer from the meaning of the image and because it would have been expected and too obvious to do. Perhaps with more time I would’ve been able to explore multiple angles, but I think it went well and I have enough angles to close a chapter when it comes to the project with the plan of opening a second chapter as a continuation of the first one in the future.
Main Evaluation
While creating the book I faced issues like having to change my theme multiple times but I am happy with the end resault. There are still shots that I am missing for the final book including but not limited to: more details, stablishing shots, moods and narrative images. I will also be rethinking my layout for the book when more images are available. Something else that I will try to do is do more research regarding the 'Sad clown paradox' inorder to give a more compelete defenition and discription within the book where I will be adding more writting to go with the pictures mainly at the start and at the end of the book.
That said this does not mean that this project is not compelete, in fact for uni I do feel like I have even went further than I shouldve to capture a wide range of images that include intresting scenes that draw attention. Therefor, I would say that I have been successful with this assignment.
Printing the book also proved to be very useful since now I know of ways to edit the photos better inorder for them to be printed better, for example I was able to see that some of the images have been darker than what I saw and have lost some details in areas, and I now also know of ways to better create bleed pages and include pictures in more than one page without following the guidlines given to me since I now know of better ways.