Thursday, August 19, 2010

Eat With Your Eyes


I found these in a compilation book of photography from Tank magazine. My knee-jerk reaction was 'HA!'



Then going back to look at them after scanning them out of the book, I now think about how great they are at literally representing the point of consumer products.
Frying up some lipgloss and eye liners; spooning up some lipsticks. I'd thought about eating lipsticks before I started to use them. Love for products, makeup, and consumer products is a kind of hunger. When I look at the bowl of lipsticks in the cereal, I think about how if I could only chew and swallow up those creamy sticks, maybe I could have permanently colored lips, rich and developed like the photo colors. More than the application of makeup, these images remind me of a kind of desire projected onto consumer products: they'll make up us, we will become them, and they us. Just like the way food becomes a part of you when you eat it.
These pictures remind me that I want to gobble up the powders and creams and cakes, and become what I consume.

4 comments:

  1. First I thought "I normally love food photos, but there is something off about these... They don't exactly make me want to eat, more like spew..." And only when I read your text I noticed that there were makeup products in the food. But quite opposite to you, I don't find the idea of eating them appealing at all. But I read somewhere that a woman that regularly uses lipstick eats a kilo of it in her life.

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  2. Well obviously (quoting Voldy's comment), I think it really is a great way to advertise make-up... It's a bit eccentric but definitely unique :)
    Good post <3

    Check out my blog... Leave a comment and even follow it if you like. It's still quite new, but I will definitely be posting a lot more...
    http://pauinomenon.blogspot.com/

    xoxo
    Paulina

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  3. AH! These photos are amazing and what's more amazing is your assessment of how much they aren't so far from how we are affected by consumption and consumer impulses... it reminds me of this David Foster Wallace speech on Kafka where he asks us to consider what it means if someone is literally 'creepy' or to literally 'eat shit' and to consider these things is to get closer to Kafka's essential joke (if we can call it that!) and somehow these photos are getting closer to some essential joke that I want to be in on. I'm so glad I found your blog! Your blog is amazing..

    Jenny

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