Edible Communities, Edible Boston

Edible Boston

Interest in local foodways has found its champion in a collection of magazines belonging to the Edible Communities network.  These regional magazines, independently published under an umbrella network highlight and celebrate regional American food and foodways. Often times issued for free, these magazines, included local stories, seasonal recipes and sponsorship from local businesses. The Edible Communities network was established in 2002 and now features 70 titles. Communities represented include anywhere from Brooklyn, NY to Reno-Tahoe, NV.  

Because the content of these magazines aim to present hyper-local information, their readership often reflects that locale, although, people living outside of those regions can read magazines from other areas as a means to seeing what the rest of the country is eating. Using Edible Boston as an example we can see how this magazine has become woven into the fabric of the local food scene of the city. The ads, articles and authors can claim heritage to the region. In the latest issue of Edible Boston, author Erin Byers Murray writes about a new trend in dinner party dining. Erin is from the Boston region, has previously worked in in online editing(for Daily Candy, Boston), and recently published her first book—Shucked, a memoir of her year spent working at Island Creek Oyster Farm in Duxbury, MA. Her authenticity as Boston local is validated through her numerous local food-centered experiences. 

Edible Boston, now on their 5th year of publication, has successfully established themselves as a the voice of the local food movement in Boston. Simply leafing through that last few issues, a theme of sustainability becomes apparent.  From the articles to the profiles, and even in the letters from the Editor in Chief, concepts of sustainability are introduced, making this publication a magazine with a mission.  

The subject matter and tones varies and includes lighthearted pieces, and at times, articles with challenging subject matter. But the writing is strong (the editor has a number of professional contributing writers on the roster) and highly readable. 

As someone who reads a magazine for the quality of the photography and design as much as its editorial content, I find Edible Boston expertly designed. From the recycled paper it is printed on (themes of sustainability ever present!) to the layout, and photography, the publication is visually pleasing. And at times, when compared to Bon Appétit  (more so than to SAVEUR) the photography and layout is far superior. I would wager that has to do with who is fronting the bills. Magazine are possible because of Ads.  In order to circulate a magazine like Bon Appétit, the publisher, in this case Condé Nast, has to source ads from top-billers. However, that does influence their content. In the last few years the number of editorial pages of BA are less than ads. Edible Boston, and I'm sure other Edible publications are able to avoid many of the traditional pitfalls associated with soliciting ads because their subject matter and the very core of the magazine is locally centered, making advertisements from local food related business in the magazine a very good idea. The model has spawned a mutually beneficial relationship for both parties involved. 

Whether the success of this hyper-local model is any indication of how we should eat can surely be contested, but the Edible Community is going 10 years strong, and that definitely says something about where our interest lay.

King of Ads

In analyzing this ad, I began by asking the question of what this ad was attempting to communicate and how effectively that was accomplished, if it was at all. I chose a McDonald's ad to analyze for two reasons. I was curious what strategies they were currently employing and how those ad worked into the larger narrative of their brand. As John Helmer states in article "Love on a Bun", "No single purveyor of fast food has done more to advance [this] cultural change than McDonald's Corporation, whose influence is seen in virtually every American community and in many places around the world."

Interestingly, this ad is devoid of food, aside from the cropped image that appears on the carton. Even though there is a very obvious absence of food, we know that McDonald's is advertising food, but in this ad, the emphasis is placed on the atmosphere you can now expect in McDonald's.  In the continuous effort to modernize their image to reflect that desire of contemporary culture, McDonalds have employed clever marketing strategies to insert itself into larger conversation of popular culture. This ad shows a McDonald's patron accessing the wireless internet now available at all its restaurants.  Substituting a hamburger carton for a laptop and the restaurant for a café (or a similar location usually associated with surfing on the internet), the message is further reinforced by the language used.  Stating that Wi-Fi is "served" connotes McDonald's primary purpose as a restaurant, along with its newest embodiment as a modern and perhaps even hip place to bring your laptop. We know this is the direction the McDonald's brand is moving in as it has launched a series of coffeehouse inspired attachments to its restaurants called McCafés.

While most advertisements in food approach consumers from a classist or gendered standpoint, McDonald's has successfully avoided the pitfalls that can lead to by attaching itself to a technology in this ad. That is not to say they never use such tactics when advertising food but this ad communicates the mobility associated with fast food and a new expression of that mobility exemplified by McDonald's addition of Wi-Fi to its restaurants.  By removing any overt notion of gender, race, age, etc. this ad successfully targets anyone with a computer.

4 slices

Right now I'm into citrus fruit. I had a grapefruit that I wanted to do something with so I ended up searing the wedges and drizzling them with honey and thyme. It turns out grapefruits are gorgeous fruits to photograph because of their bright rich color. They're stunning against a black background.  Lately, all my photographs of food are shot with a black background. I'm trying to photograph food, not environment so I like that I can eliminate setting and whatever context that implies by replacing it with a black background.

Recently it's been pointed out to me that my photographs are reminiscent of the Northern European food still life paintings with their blacked-out backgrounds and organic presentation of food. I can't outright deny their influence, but it definitely wasn't intentionally done. Everything seen is absorbed and stored and ends up being influential whether I want it to be or not. 

In regards to this photo, I don't have any emotional ties to grapefruit. I never really ate them growing up unless it was at one particular friend's house. Mostly, I associate them with restriction and diets so I may harbor some unfounded resentment against them. With that said, they are extremely bitter, a flavor my non-supertaster self enjoys, so I decided to revisit them, and posted this photograph along with a pithy, lean and poignant blurb on my personal blog. I take photographs of a lot of the food I eat for my blog, but only in controlled environments where I can use the light and space how I want to.  You'll never find me with my camera in a restaurant unless it's a paid gig.[1]

My photographs go through some post-production to achieve the look they end up with. I know what I'm going to modify them when I’m edit them so I photograph them with that in mind.  I also have preferred conditions to photograph food in so I take steps to ensure those conditions are possible. I only shoot in natural light, which means almost every photograph is taken in the morning or early afternoon, a difficult feat during the weekdays, so weekends are when I work.

The interview with Olga Truchan nicely summed up the way food styling and photography has changed over the decades. We have moved from an artificial highly stylized presentation to food that is unpretentious, half eaten and supremely approachable. The food photography on blogs (the good ones) and the photography seen in today’s top magazines are actually comparable and some food bloggers have made the transition from web to print. Both the online community and magazines are now creating food photography trends. Any person with a DSLR can take a decent picture of food. Food shots have become tighter, more gratuitous, with the primary focus being on the food itself, not the table setting, mood or environment. Gourmet Magazine’s evolutionary shots of lobsters are indicative of this trend. Their cover in the 1940’s shows a lobster on a table with a picturesque New England village in the background. Skip ahead to the 70’s and it’s just lobsters, and a whole of them.  They revisit the scenery aspect of food photography during the 80’s and 90’s but that last shot in 2009 is the epitome of food photography today--just the food with a washed out background. It coupled well with Ruth Reichl’s decision to add more politically minded articles about food to Gourmet’s repertoire, thus divorcing the glossy from its previous reputation as a magazine that’s only concerned with travel and lifestyle. It elevated the meaning of good living, the magazine’s slogan, to include the good living of those who are producing our food. It’s a touch similar to Petrini and his Slow Food-eat-better-to-help-out-the-poor-peasant-farmer, but less elitist and exclusive; you could support their shift in consciousness by picking up the magazine for four bucks.

Gourmet magazine’s approach to food photography was truly influential in shaping the way food was looked at over the years. Under Reichl, they began hiring photographers who didn’t specialize in food. It was like a breath of fresh air. Their covers have become iconic—at least to me. 

---

[1] Restaurants are for eating and flashes going off when your trying to dig into the dim sum is super mega annoying.

Cream, Butter & Indian Maidens

Land O'Lakes butter products prominently feature the image of young Indian woman on their packaging.  She is shown kneeling, facing the viewers offering a carton of butter emblazoned with her own image for our consumption. Land O'Lakes is cooperative dairy company based in the Midwestern United States. The company's name--which calls attention the numerous lakes surrounding the region, is depicted in the packaging. Behind the Indian maiden is a pristine lake flanked by dense forests. The scene is both pastoral and idyllic.

            Land O'Lakes sells butter, a decidedly American staple food. Before it became taboo and was displaced by the perennial healthy fat favorite olive oil, butter, along with other animal derived fats reined the kitchen. Land O'Lakes butter targets an American audience. In order to prove themselves a wholesome authentic company (a cooperative, not a corporation) Land O'Lakes has co-opted the image of a subservient kneeling Indian woman as their emblem. She is literally on her knees serving the product--in this case, mass produced butter to the consumer. Her subdued nature, along with the tranquil lake scene behind her, conjures a memory of America when Native peoples welcomed Europeans onto their lands, eager to share both their food and knowledge with them. The image works to capture the sentiments of the iconic First Thanksgiving Dinner, told from the perspective of the white settlers as an equal exchange of food and wisdom between the first European settlers and the Native peoples they encountered. Naturally, this history is written from the perspective of the conquerors so a bias must be assumed.  The mythology of Native peoples that persists to this day works off such encounters. Throughout the rest of American history there are numerous stories of how wise Native Americans were eager to help European settlers.[1]

            Minnesota, where Land O'Lakes is based, is also the home to one of the United States’ most well known Native peoples. Hiawatha, the credited founder and leader of the Iroquois Nation is a historical figure who has also been subjected to romanticized depictions in poetry[2] and illustrations. The decision of a Minnesota based company to draw upon the image of a Native American is tightly wound in the history of place.[3]

            In the case of the Indian maiden on Land O'Lakes' packaging, we can argue the first American Other is being used to create a sense of Americana and trusted wise wholesomeness. Depictions of Native peoples have long been used to represent compartmentalized aspects of Americana. One only need look to the sports arena for depictions the contrasting depiction of Native peoples as brutish and wild[4]. The depiction of the subservient Indian woman is reminiscent of the Pocahontas story and her sympathy for the European settlers and serves as a prime example of how racial imagery on food packages quite literally allows us to consume the Other.

---

[1] Lewis and Clark's expedition charting the newly acquired lands of the Louisiana Purchase was led in part by Sacajawea.

[2] In 1855 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned an epic poem entitled The Songs of Hiawatha.

[3] Amtrack Hiawatha is train running from Chicago to Milwaukee

[4] Redskin Mascot Google search

Generous

A Google search on obesity produced results confirming a national sentiment that obesity is a medical condition. The first hit was for the definition of obesity from the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information.  It described obesity as the means of having too much body fat. The  results that followed were of a similar nature, providing in their first few sentences a medical definition of obesity as well. An image search for obesity turned out charts, maps and other info-graphics. The first hit was an image of a child shown at various stages of weight gain. This image is indicative of the how obesity and youth have become a topic of growing public concern.

The same search conducted on Bing showed similar results. However, this search engine provided adds related to the search. The five ads that showed up were representative of the offered and accepted solutions for anyone dealing with obesity. The first ad was titled Living with Obesity? It offered an option for increased mobility—the scooter. I would like to think they didn’t appear in order of popularity. An image search on Bing presents similar results as the Google search. Here, images of children are prominent as well.

Search engines are fashioned in a way to turn a result that most people are looking for. Words are optimized to reflect their connectivity to other words, so searches for obesity will automatically result in ads for lap-band surgery and images of overweight children. Can a Google search correlate to a widely held opinion? If so, does that mean people are curious about what obesity is? Or whether it is real? Or are they looking for a solution? Where are they getting there news from if they click one of the first links that appear? The majority of the hits that appear on the first page for both the Google and Bing searches are from respected medical websites, including one, PubMed, which is a peer reviewed collection of medical articles and abstracts. That information is being relayed to the public through far more accessible means—News coverage by the LA Times and the New York Times show up as well, with articles on the “Obesity Epidemic”. An image search for obesity includes gratuitous photos of fat babies, mixed in with graphs, showing how obesity has increased in America over the last 30 years.  

 Just by glancing at the search results from both these engines it is easy to understand why there is a fear and stigma attached to obesity. There is the lurking feeling that you could be next. As if obesity was an issue to soon come upon you without notice. The images of people who are obese are caricatures. Men and children are shown with their shirts off, bellies and rolls on display for our ridicule, shock and disgust.  Also included are graphs showing how obesity has increased over the years. Together with the web search results, someone seeking information on obesity could easily be scared.

A search for obesity and change produced results regarding lifestyle changes. But the images continued to produce similar images as the obesity search. Considering these parameters, it is fair to suggest that there is moral panic regarding obesity. We are surrounded by its image and its threat. Moral panic  chose a scapegoat, a people to blame and ostracize. Looking to the image search results for confirmation, we can easily guess who such scapegoats would be—those who already are obese. Their bodies are memento moris for the rest of us. 

Café Du Monde

This is a photograph of a server at Café Du Monde in New Orleans, Louisiana.  All servers at the cafe wear this uniform, including the thin paper army side cap with the name Cafe Du Monde printed in green ink.[1] The obvious purpose of these hats is to help you identify who works at the cafe, but their shape, reminiscent of a previous era[2], encourages the feeling of nostalgia people are seeking when they come to Café Du Monde to try their food.

This image is meant to capture how the details of an appearance can change the mood of an environment. The uniform of the waiters at Café Du Monde establishes this location as a place that has a history--this is the uniform servers have always worn.  So not only does it have a history, is it a place that has remained the same over the number of years. People travel to the café to experience a piece of New Orleans from years long ago. By surrounding its patrons with various images of nostalgia, the Cafe has successfully created an environment where the old New Orleans still exists.

---

[1] Nostalgia is a commodity available for purchase.

[2] The side cap is used by various divisions of the armed forces.