Raw Food Photography
Bon Appétit gets a redesign with bigger, bolder imagery done by photographers not known for shooting food
Published in PDN, February 2009. This is the unedited version.
By Kristina Feliciano
Just how visually daring can a well-known, firmly established food magazine get without leaving its longtime readers feeling as cold as yesterday’s mashed potatoes? Bon Appetit is finding out. Last February, having already introduced a lowercase logo, the Conde Nast glossy rolled out a crisply conceived redesign aimed at enhancing its appeal to the younger members of its broad 25-to-55-year-old demographic. Central to the new look is a conceptual approach to the photography—the foodiness of food, if you will, is often front and center. Thick purple veins on a sheaf of jade-colored lettuce. A close-up of a fork piercing a partially eaten hunk of pork roast, the moist flesh a peachy pink. Scoops of ice cream crowded into in a stainless-steel tray, sweating it out together like subway riders on a sweltering New York City summer. The styling is less cluttered, more modern, and the lighting is often so clean and bright—think ring flash—that the ingredients look like they’ve been caught in flagrante.
The former Bon Appetit was a far more discreet proposition, the palette all golden browns, the focus softer, the lighting genteel. And it was shot mostly by photographers from the usual food network—unlike the new Bon Appetit, which has featured savory pies by Elinor Carucci, a hipster cocktail party by Brian Finke and steak frites by Craig Cutler. The 22-year-old magazine is unequivocally cooler and arguably more creative than ever, yet the blogosphere has practically turned itself inside out in response to the photography in particular. One post described the photos as “weird”—and meant it as praise. “I never ever used [Bon Appetit] until the redesign,” read the comment. “I found the old version to be too simple and old fashioned.” But another deemed the photos “sinister,” and not in a good way. “It’s tricky to go from zero to a hundred,” acknowledges photo editor Bailey Franklin. “You end up alienating readers. But this is ultimately about broadening the readership, as opposed to replacing one with the other.”
Timing, unfortunately, was not on their side. By the end of last year, the economy had nosedived and the publishing industry was in distress: magazines were being shuttered, layoffs were a daily norm and everyone was slashing budgets. When PDN spoke to the team behind the redesign—design director Matthew Lenning, art director Robert Festino, and Franklin—they were still digesting their readers’ feedback, while wondering if perhaps they’d need to retreat to safer esthetic territory until things improved.
At least they could reassure themselves that they’d had quite a run in 2008, producing work that represented the best of their ideals, especially in terms of the photography. A lot of food magazines strive to have all of the photos look like they were shot by one person, but with the redesign, Bon Appetit wanted to diversify the feel of the images. “Our approach is to create an environment where we can have very distinct photographers working in the magazine and each one has a strong individual statement that can contrast off of each other,” says Lenning. He also wanted to reassess the talent—the magazine had been using the same four or five photographers regularly. “A lot of photographers being used were really important contributors to other magazines, and as a brand I have an issue with that,” he says. “I wanted to put our own stamp on things.”
He and Franklin and Festino (who oversaw the award-winning 2004 redesign of Runner’s World) began reaching out to non-food photographers to see what new perspective they could bring to the work. It was a tough sell at first. “It was very difficult to convince people in the beginning to shoot for us because they didn’t want to be art directed to death. They might have had experiences with other magazines that said, ‘This is who we are, and this is how we shoot,’ and it became about them having a byline in the book,” explains Lenning. At the new Bon Appetit, the creative team hashes out the concepts for the shoots ahead of time and determines the mix of photographic sensibilities they want to present, and then they match photographers to the stories. Even if the person has never shot food before, “if you’ve made the right the pick, it’s a pretty easy conversation to have with them,” says Lenning.
Elinor Carucci, for example, is widely regarded for her striking portraits of herself and her family, and yet Bon Appetit tapped her for a story on savory pies. “We really wanted it to have a fresh-out-of-the-oven look, not quite rustic but kind of homey and warm. And I immediately thought of a shoot that I’d seen in Elinor Carucci’s portfolio,” says Franklin. “Although it was a travel story, where she’s dealing with the available light, there was something about the intimacy and the warm that mad me think she’d be great.” Indeed, he says, her story for Bon Appetit was “gorgeous. And it totally looks like her.”
For the July cover, the magazine’s annual hamburger issue, Lenning tried out several photographers to try to come up with a new take on a classic, and potentially prosaic, subject. He was envisioning the sandwich as a piece of architecture, and he wanted a photographer who saw it the same way. Nigel Cox, who had previously shot only front-of-book images for Bon Appetit—characterized by “dramatic, ominous-looking light,” says Lenning—ultimately nailed it. “It’s one of my favorite covers,” says the design director.
Lenning is also responsible for having brought Craig Cutler on board. He was a fan of the photographer’s graphic style and wanted to bring that look into the magazine. “He can find that sort of tastiness with the food, but he has a consciousness that extends beyond that because he’s a thinker,” says Lenning. In the past year, Cutler has shot numerous Bon Appetit covers, including a stark steak frites shot that he and Lenning collaborated on via sketches that they sent back and forth long before the shoot took place. “We always treated the cover not as food but as graphic images,” says Cutler. “Sometimes [that approach] divides the camp into people who like it and those who want pretty food pictures. A photo should be able to stand on its own, whether it’s food or not. I hate pretty food pictures.”
Bon Appetit’s new approach to imagery cuts to the core of good photo editing: identifying a photographer’s visual personality and giving them an assignment where their job is to express it. For the story “America’s Foodiest Small Town” in the October 2008 issue, Sian Kennedy was sent to Durham–Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with a shot list (shoot a portrait of this guy, of that woman, shoot this recipe, this market, etc.) and a lot of latitude. “In terms of art direction, that was left entirely to me to interpret. They kept ensuring me they wanted my point of view,” says Kennedy, who brought back photos ranging from the word “pie” written on someone’s hand to a paparazzo-like shot of a goat and picture of a husky guy clutching a bacon-laden grilled-cheese sandwich.
Franklin scouts talent online through agency and photographer websites, as well as through fine-art photographer Amy Stein’s blog (amysteinphoto.blogspot.com), where she writes about fellow artists such as Graham Miller and Corey Arnold. “We do tend to like photographers that have a bit of a fine-art or a gallery aspect to their careers, and we’ll reference that or their personal work,” says Franklin. “Brian Finke is a good example of that.” For the December 2008 issue, they hired him to shoot a group of retro Brooklyn hipsters having a party featuring vintage cocktails. “We wanted to really capture the youthful energy of this really cute hipster couple. Brian is so good at that—he’s able to capture and convey the energy of the moment. It’s absolutely real, but it also has a slight sense of drama,” says Franklin.
Though they’ve already worked with a lot of top names, there are still many photographers on the Bon Appetit team’s wish list. “I’d love to give a travel story to Nadav Kander. He has such a strong personality and a strong sense of place,” says Franklin. “And Jessica Craig-Martin for an EW-esque entertaining story. Isabelle Bonjean—she has s very interesting take on still life and incorporating food.” And Irving Penn for the magazine’s “Market” page, which is dedicated to a single ingredient. “With so many of the still-life people, the way they shoot this page is so much of an homage to Irving Penn. It’d be so amazing to have him,” says Lenning. “He doesn’t return our calls, though.”
Before they push the envelope any further, though, they’re trying to work out how to balance the needs of more traditional readers with those of a younger audience that savors the new—while also keeping an eye on the response of advertisers who, in the current economic climate, might balk at a food magazine that takes risks visually. Kenji Toma’s surreal ice cream story, for instance, was fascinating from a design viewpoint but lacked the inviting appeal that a food story ultimately must offer. “To some extent, I think we went too far. Because we deliberately did things to be different. We’re kind of looking at the mistakes we made,” says Festino. Yet the new Bon Appetit apparently has some admirers among its peers. Festino notes that Toma has started shooting for Gourmet. “Even Martha Stewart Living has been doing some more graphic things,” he says.
“We’re always thinking and reconsidering where we’re at as a brand, especially now—it’s a different world,” says Lenning. “It’s a very value-focused product now. Graphically, we have to respond to the changing message of the magazine.” He mentioned an upcoming story on 50 ways to eat green, for example, and noted that they planned for it to look “softer.” But they’re not ready to totally give up their conceptual approach just yet. “It’s hard to do, and you kind of risk putting the food in a context that is off-putting,” he says, “but you have to keep challenging yourself and your reader too.”