Friday, December 04, 2015

The Photography of Modernist Cuisine

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There follows a rave about this astonishing book..........................



We've looked at the outside of this amazing book before.  It is amazingly large (and heavy), and it is even more amazingly gorgeous.  Getting to look at humongous photographs of ordinary (and unusual) objects is awe inspiring, and informative (getting to see all those details......!!!).

This book is like watching a film in IMAX, compared to watching it at home on your 21" tv.

I'll give you a tantalizing taste of the contents.  If you have any interest in food, or if you like to see what things look like "on the big screen," or if you love photography, I urge you to check this book out of your library, if you possibly can.  A look at the contents is well worth the labor of locating it, laying hands on it, and lugging it around.

Romanesco.



A (relatively) tiny book, to give a sense of scale..........



We're looking at a seriously large book.  Certainly the largest one I've ever picked up, or taken home.



Tomato.



The next two are such thin slices that they are translucent.

Watermelon.



Green onions?



This might be my fave.  Artichoke.  The lines.  The colors..................



Raspberries.



Dry beans.



The flower end of a blueberry.  !!!



More blueberries.  I'd never thought about what the inside of a blueberry looked like, but I would not have guessed they look like this.............



Myhrvold likes to take pics of things cut right down the middle.  Here we have growing vegetables, in the earth, all cut right down the middle.  Carrots and beets, and I don't know what that white thing is.



Broccoli in a steamer, over boiling water.  All cut in half.



Hamburgers on the grill.  Cut in half.



Macaroni and cheese.  Wow.  I will eat it.



Onions, asparagus, peas.  I will eat this, too, after it's cooked.



This spectacular book has an excellent index -- you don't have to remember the page number of the item you wanted to identify.  The index has small versions of the pix.



Back cover.  Wow, yes?


Altogether, a wonderful incredible book.  In addition to WAY more pics than I showed you, there is a lot of text, here and there, describing how some of the pics were taken.  Getting these images was complicated and labor-intensive.

Well worth the trouble of trying to find a copy of this book you can borrow, lugging it home, and finding a surface big enough to lay it down so you can page through.......................

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5 comments:

Jeanie said...

This looks amazing, like one of those books where you fall in and can't get out! I hadn't heard of it -- thanks for sharing -- I'll have to check it out at the bookstore!

penni said...

I must find the book -- it will sooth away the complications of the day.

I need orange said...

It is an amazing book. I really hated to give it back to the library..... :-)

I need orange said...

ps -- Amazon has it. :-)

I need orange said...

Jeanie -- it really is amazing. I had it on reserve through MelCat. When I picked it up at my library I was stunned at how big it is. And by how wonderful it was to see such BIG images. :-)

I took an on-line class on the Science of Cooking, and they invited a lot of modernist cuisine chefs to give lecture/demos. One of them is Nathan Myhrvold. He showed us some pictures of things cut in half (like the broccoli, cooking, in the pic in my post). I went looking for a copy of this book to borrow, and found it in MelCat. :-)