Entering my final tutorial, I chose to focus on the questions of value that surround food, food imagery, and contemporary culinary culture. I felt I had reached a satisfactory point in my visual research and was pleased with the questions and reflections that my work was evoking.
Abbie provided positive feedback on my work. She suggested that I could finish with the project as it stands and spend my remaining time further examining its themes through writing. She proposed that I look further into ideas of cultural capital and perhaps experiment with the formal qualities of my designs by translating them back into oil paintings if I wished. Ling spoke of the cultural differences at play in the myriad ways we relate to food across the world, and it was suggested that I look further into the often unethical global supply chains that make stylized food photography possible. These, of course, being the descendants of the colonial supply chains that filled the dinner table of many wealthy Dutch merchants in the 17th century.
Devon also suggested focusing specifically on organic food and health as prime signifiers of status, which could be a valuable subcategory around which to focalize future iterations of the project. Soojin and Aishwarya also raised interesting questions around the role that money plays in foodie culture, and around the wastage inherent in food photoshoots.