Taking photos of your food (certainly in a non-professional manner) gets a lot of bad press and comments such as crass and bad taste, yet it鈥檚 everywhere. Sex and food is relevant to everyone. Even those that deride food photography have to eat and if it wasn鈥檛 for sex they wouldn鈥檛 be here to complain about food photography; however foodporn is much easier and more socially acceptable to share than porn in a more traditional sense.
Imagery of food is as old as imagery itself聽appearing in early cave paintings but even from Egyptian hieroglyphics, depicting everyday life and worship thorough Roman mosaics displaying wealth and plentiness, there were elements of foodporn.
Food photography started to appear in the early 19th century, most probably used to hone photography skills, learn about light shadow, composition and depth of field; and followed similar artistic themes as early still life paintings.
Once printing techniques improved in the 20th century, food photography took on more of a commercial theme rather than artistic. With a rise in magazines, cookbooks and advertising food photos now needed to 鈥渟ex up鈥 and visually sell us the food.
Over the years commercial foodporn has seen many different changes in styles from simplistic early work involving very little dressing, shot from above, plated, all in focus, with nothing in the background, through worrying trends of making the food not only inedible but also quite possibly deadly. Techniques involving: hairspray, cigarette smoke (to give that fresh from the oven look?!), glue for milk and glycerine to make things look moist were widely used through the 60s and 70s.
But at this point food photography wasn鈥檛 something that was accessible to the masses, as with all forms of commercial photography it was expensive, you needed studio space with intricate lighting rigs, an expensive camera and expensive film and to really make it you needed a food stylist.
Nowadays, in all聽it’s forms,聽photography is聽more accessible than it has ever been before and that also means foodporn is easier to capture and share. With the Instagram effect, advances in phone camera quality and photo filter and processing apps such as VSCO, everyone can now indulge.
It was a rare sight to see someone with an SLR standing up from the table to get the right shot of their plate of food and was largely limited to the professional in a studio set up. It鈥檚 now so quick and easy to get your (or most probably already in your hand trying to get the WIFI code off the waiter) that even if you鈥檙e anti foodporn you鈥檝e probably got at least one photo of it on your camera roll.
The current trends see a more fresher and natural look to food which might mean an end to hairspray on the list of ingredients. With everyone now sharing, amateur cooks with pro-chef cookbooks are gleefully taking to social media with: 鈥淚 just made this鈥 and it looks just like the recipe鈥 photos so it鈥檚 in the interests of those chefs and the photographers they use to produce their books to make that an attainable goal.
What is it that elevates food photography into foodporn categorisation? Well as with traditional pornography it stimulates more than just your eyes. Functional medical journal and textbook imagery of the naked human form is not deemed as pornographic (for most 鈥渘ormal鈥 people) and the same can be said for functional food photography. Food imagery depicting: 鈥淭hese are the ingredients you鈥檒l need for this dish鈥, 鈥淗ere鈥檚 how you cut an onion鈥 isn鈥檛 really going to do it for the foodporn affectionado. However once the dish is put together, 鈥淟ook how tasty this is鈥 imagery takes on the multi-stimulating mantel of foodporn.
However with the rise in accessible photography, social media and such an appetite for foodporn, there is the inevitable rise in bad food photography. You can take a bad photo of a beautiful sunset and to the observer it鈥檚 just a bad photo, possibly dismissed with thoughts of 鈥淚 could鈥檝e taken that better鈥. But foodporn stimulates other parts of the brain so it鈥檚 not just your eyes that dismiss it as a bad photo but your stomach and taste buds reject it as well, possibly leaving you with a loss of appetite and a bad taste in your mouth.
No one wants to eat grey food, or food that looks like it鈥檚 already been eaten at some point in much the same way that 鈥渕ost鈥 people don鈥檛 have sexual desires over imagery of medical conditions and autopsies!