The image above is an image captured by the Famous Historical Photographer Irving Penn. The image is named Salad Ingredients and was captured in New York in 1947.
In the image you can see food, in particular things that would make a salad like the lettuce and the lemon juice. There are also herbs and spices in the image, which have been placed around the spoons. There is also a texture in the image, which sits underneath all of the food. You can see this particular in the right of the image.
The main viewpoint of which the image has been captured is directly above. With the image been captured like this it has been made easier to see the face that is being created in the image. If the image was captured from a 45-degree angle or just generally lower down you would not be able to pick the face out of the image as easy.
The colours for the image are unusual in this series he created as they are all in full colour and not in black and white. Penn, before colour came along and in some cases when it was on the go, still took images in black and white as he preferred it as it showed a greater understanding to an image in that form.
When you study the image and look into the view on connotation you first have to ask why has Irving Penn taken the salad apart to create the final and image, and why didn’t he leave the salad as one piece for the final image.
When you take a step back from the image it slightly shows a face being created with in it, as the lemon in the center of the image acts as the nose, the sources on the spoons act as eyes and the lettuce in the top part of the image acts as the hairstyle.
The image is also similar to one of the photographs that he captured in the same year, which contained food. The image Still life with Watermelon has the same over all effect when you take a step back and look at it as it contains a face again, as the watermelon acts as the smile on a face and the bowl of fruit acts as the over all style of a face with grapes places onto of the bowl to act as hair. This image can be seen below
In the same year Penn was capturing these images he was also capturing portrait images of Fashion people such as George Nathan. The Food images at the time were also breaking the boundary for Penn as they where captured in color. In my opinion with him capturing Portraits and food at the same time the question has to be asked was the food photography images practice attempts for his feature portrait pictures.
