AGrab

Slice

Ilke Karademir

This is an organized book of images that I have gathered during my Project called “Hunter Gatherers”.

I started out by picking an image, which was an oil painting titled “Marsbar” by Beth Freeman. It is a photorealistic paint-ing of a Marsbar slice. It is not a photo yet a painting and that very reason is why I found this piece interesting. It was painted to study the texture of the chocolate bar, with the shiny car-amel flowing out. So I started gathering my own images out from this painting.

I gathered slices of fruits, vegetables, chocolate bars and photographed them. I did the same study that has been done on the painting with photography. I zoomed inside the inner textures of these objects and cropped them. The visuals start-ed to fascinate me, so I decided to go on and gather some more textures.

After my first gatherings, I limited myself to food. I start-ed photographing only slices of food, textures of food, but all food. What I gathered was a bunch of food photos with no relation to each other whatsoever, but if organized careful-ly with a striking title it would have some impact on people. When I was trying to shoot some macro shots out of these food, I realized most of the textures on these food that I like are very unsettling and bizarre. Yet this did not stop me from eating them. The idea of analyzing the textures of these food we eat all our lives is an interesting one. When we eat, we do it unconsciously. We look at our food but we do not really see it. Not only we do not know what’s inside our food, we don’t even look at the textures carefully. I decided to study these very textures.

The process of gathering these food and photographing them was a bit complicated at first. I started by gathering the most obvious ones that are not hard to find. Then I went out and gathered some more. I took photos of these food on plates, tables and counters. Then I switched to photographing them at the exact same place with the same lighting condi-tions. To achieve that I built a mini home studio out of a box and pasted LED lights all around it. To achieve the consisten-cy, this was the perfect way to take photos.

With my mini portable photo studio, I took many photos and categorized them regarding their properties. I photographed most of the food on plates as slices and took their macro shots to see the texture better. This created two categories automat-ically. And there were the groups of fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy products and snacks. I merged them and created three groups; “Fruits & Vegetables”, “Meat & Dairy” and “Sweets & Snacks”. These three groups also have their subgroups which include their macro shot textures.

After I gathered all the images, grouped them and made dig-ital touch ups, I designed the photobook. In the book you will find my process of hunting and gathering. Here, grab a slice.

Ilke Karademir

Grab A Slice

fruits &

vegetables

fruits &

vegetablesCLOSEUPS

meat &

dairy

meat &

dairyCLOSEUPS

sweets&

snacks

sweets &

snacksCLOSEUPS