When the tears came, they weren’t always for the dead and the unfathomable depths of suffering. They also flowed for the times in between, for the joy and smiles of the unknowing.
As the acclaimed American war photographer Corinne Dufka sorted through the pictures and negatives for her new book, This Is War: Photographs from a Decade of Conflict, covering more than a decade on frontlines from El Salvador to Bosnia and Liberia, she once again looked into the faces she had perhaps only registered briefly years ago.
“I entered into this zone of memory, of trying to understand what I witnessed. That in and of itself is an interesting process because I wept a lot,” she said. “Some of the pictures that were saddest were of times of hope. One of the saddest pictures is in between the first and second wars in Liberia when people are waiting in line to vote, so earnestly and with so much enthusiasm and optimism. They didn’t know that within two years their country would be involved in another horrific conflict.”
This Is War is thankfully spare on dead bodies. They are there but the focus of the book, as with most of Dufka’s work, is on those responsible for the killing or forced to live with its consequences.
In one picture, Dufka captures a child combatant playing with an abandoned toy as he guards a checkpoint in the middle of the embattled Liberian capital, Monrovia, in 1996. A rural Salvadorian woman stands at her window holding a photo of her husband who was one of three men in her village abducted by the army, and tortured and murdered.
El Salvador. Photograph: Corinne Dufka
In besieged Sarajevo, Dufka turns her camera on the agony of parting with no certainty as to when, or even if, women and children waving from an evacuation bus will see their families again. In Mostar, a Bosnian Croat soldier nonchalantly holds his gun at his side as hundreds of Muslim men are marched down a mountain track to a prison camp in an abandoned factory.
The book’s cover photo is of a pile of machetes discarded at Rwanda’s border as Hutus fled the country following the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in 1994. A lone child stares at the camera as the adults shuffle past carrying bundles and responsibility for the last great crime against humanity of the 20th century.
Dufka describes her book as a “personal journey to come to terms with these dozen tumultuous years of covering some of the bloodiest and most horrific conflicts of the latter part of the last century in which I saw not only tens of thousands of people who’ve been killed in these outbursts of unspeakable violence but also a dozen or so journalist friends killed”.
Part of that is a reckoning with what she frankly admits is her own dehumanisation. Dufka came to war photography by accident. She was a psychiatric social worker in San Francisco for a decade before heading to El Salvador at the height of its civil war in the mid-1980s, first as a social worker with the Lutheran church and then a human rights investigator tracking the murderous work of the country’s rightwing death squads.
Herbert Anaya, the director of El Salvador’s human rights commission, asked Dufka to set up a photo documentation programme. Two weeks later he was murdered by a death squad. Dufka took the photo of Anaya’s body published in the New York Times the next day. Not long after she went to work for Reuters.
El Salvador’s conflict was rooted in resistance to historic oppression but it had an ideological hue because the guerrillas were Marxist. By the time Dufka arrived in Bosnia in 1992, the old cold war rivalries had given way to ethnic and nationalist conflict that came to define so many of the wars in Europe and Africa in that decade. The scale of human barbarity horrified Dufka but drew her in.
“It’s a theme throughout my life of trying to address dehumanisation that started way back in my family because there was a lot of suffering from blindness, from mental illness, there’s a lot of substance abuse. So I learned to get on with it and then I transferred those skills to my life as a photojournalist,” she said.
Bosnia. Photograph: Corinne Dufka
In 1997, the International Women’s Media Foundation awarded Dufka its courage in journalism prize. By then she had a reputation among her peers for astonishing bravery in the midst of some of the most brutal conflicts.
In Rwanda, a member of a Hutu death squad put a gun to her head until she talked him down. She captured intense street battles in Monrovia from among the combatants.
Dufka was badly injured when an anti-tank mine exploded under the Reuters armoured car in Bosnia in 1993, turning her camera into shrapnel that smashed into her face. The force of the blast tore the ligaments in her knees and she suffered internal bleeding.
Dufka and her injured colleagues tumbled out of the burning car only to come under Croatian sniper fire before their rescue by British soldiers. Three weeks later she was in Somalia, still walking with a cane.
The role of photographers has come under more scrutiny in recent years, in part because it’s so much easier for anyone to take a picture of individual suffering and have the wider world view it.
“There’s a debate about who should have ownership. Whether, if you’re not from a community or a victim from that population, you have a right to even photograph. There’s a level of sensitivity about showing people in hardship and conflict,” she said. “War is ugly and war is painful. It’s important that people see the handiwork of those who make and perpetrate and support wars. It’s really a minority of people, usually from political elites, who object.”
Dufka said that only once did someone tell her to stop taking a picture. A man turned on her after a bombing during South Africa’s first free elections in 1994 and kicked her in the face.
“That was the one time. Very often it was the opposite. People welcomed me into their homes, into the hospitals, into their battlefields, into graveyards where burials were taking place,” she said.
Dufka drew satisfaction from the fact that her work and that of other photographers can have real political impact in foreign capitals and influence policies to alleviate suffering if not end conflicts. But she came to understand the price of viewing war through a lens.
“I have to say it’s profoundly dehumanising. You can’t break down every time you see human suffering. You’ve got to keep it together and do your damn job. But that has a price,” she said.
Liberia. Photograph: Corinne Dufka
Dufka wasn’t even present at the atrocity that prompted her to give up war photography. She was on a plane flying out of Nairobi in 1998 when al-Qaida blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing 224 people, almost all Africans. She was horrified when she realised she was more upset at missing the opportunity to photograph the carnage than she was about the victims.
“I hadn’t given a thought to the Kenyans and I’d been living in the country for six years. I was so profoundly ashamed of myself. I’d become so dehumanised. I didn’t recognise myself, and that’s why I got out,” she said.
But Dufka didn’t give up on conflict, she changed how she worked with it. In 1999, she moved to Sierra Leone to open a field office for Human Rights Watch documenting its civil war and the terrible crimes against civilians including the cutting off of limbs. The switch to taking testimony and then working as a criminal investigator for the UN war crimes court for Sierra Leone felt like more of a contribution. She also had a daughter, which again shifted her perspective on war, and eventually moved back to the US.
“In those years I never gave myself a break. I went from conflict to conflict to conflict. There are some people who become afflicted with post-traumatic stress. That’s just not the way my personality is wired. I only had one post-traumatic stress incident, right after my daughter was born for about a month with intrusive dreams and thoughts. I achieved more balance in my life now,” she said.
As she was sorting the photographs for the book, Dufka was struck by how many places she worked remain in conflict of some form. Ethiopia was at war again. So was Sudan.
“Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Liberia, they’re still grappling with the legacies of conflict. Endemic corruption and some of the world’s worst socioeconomic indicators,” she said. “I would like this book to generate some reflection about conflict, relapse and risk in recidivism.”
So does she see common features in conflicts as far apart as Central America, Europe and central Africa? “One common thread is a conclusion about human behaviour. There’s nothing that people will not do to each other, and there’s nothing they won’t do for each other. I’m not the first one to say that but it is so clear. I have watched profound brutality and cruelty, and then documented later, as a human rights investigator, the most astounding acts of human generosity and courage to help each other,” she said.
“I also learned that fear is stronger than love and the sort of solidarity that binds communities together. You saw that in Rwanda, in Bosnia, where you have communities turn on each other. It’s manipulated, of course. But fear is a huge motivator.”
FOAM have announced their annual talent call, which gives entrants the chance to have their work published in the prestigious Foam Magazine and be exhibited in Amsterdam during Unseen Photo Fair. The Foam Talent Call is a springboard into the photography industry, giving young photographers international recognition and acclaim. Previous Foam Talents include Ina Jang, Alex Prager, Jessica Eaton, Shane Lavalette, Sam Falls, Pieter Hugo, and Mayumi Hosokura, as well as 1000 Words featured artists, Taryn Simon, Daniel Gordon, Daisuke Yokota, Melinda Gibson and Esther Teichmann.
Entrants must be between 18-35 years old and the entrance fee is 35 euros. 15 selected talents will receive an eight page portfolio showcasing their series along with an interview by an esteemed writer. The competition is open for entries until the 12 March via their website or through their Facebook page. Click here to apply or watch the video preview below for more information.
“The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.”–Goethe
In what will become one of the standout shows of the season, the MoMA is presenting the first museum survey, To Look Without Fear, of the artist, Wolfgang Tillmansopening on September 12th. Curated by Roxana Marcoci, MoMA’s Senior Curator of Photography, the exhibition takes us on a serendipitous exploration. While the journey begins chronologically, the various mediums, juxtaposition of works, manners of display, and installations–all reveal an artist with deep curiosity and a tenacious commitment to freedom.
Now in his 50′s, Tillmans’s career has spanned the 1980s to the present. He began his explorations in a time before the internet when the use of a photocopier machine, video cameras and audio equipment had a different relevance than today. While his creative approach to art has adapted with the times, the common thread throughout his oeuvre has always been his humanistic sensibility.
When asked about his work, Tillmans told a group of us that one should not “come to these pictures with ‘W Questions’ (why, what, when, who) but rather with ‘H Questions’–how?” The how this work makes us feel, how it connects us with others, and how it inspires–are some of the questions Tillmans asks of us.
But as we all know…each of us will have our own unique experience engaging the work, wandering the rooms, and creating our own meaning. No matter what an artist asks of us, or curators tailor for us, sometimes the hardest thing to see is before our eyes. –Lane Nevares
I SPENT MUCH of this week in the House of Commons press gallery not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Theresa May laying out the case for her deal on Tuesday, her voice so hoarse that it could hardly be heard and her body hunched, was a moment of both personal and national humiliation. The chaos on Wednesday, when Tory MPs were first told that they wouldn’t be whipped and then, at the last moment, that they would, sending them scurrying hither and thither, was a moment of high farce. And what are we to make of Thursday, when Stephen Barclay, the Brexit minister, spoke in favour of a government motion at the dispatch box and then marched off to vote against it?
But before we lose faith in British democracy entirely it’s worth remembering two things. The first is that there were some fine speeches among the craziness and dross. Kenneth Clarke, the Father of the House, was the most statesmanlike. He made a good case that what the British people voted for in the referendum was to leave the political structures of the European Union but remain within the common market and suggested that this might provide the template for a compromise. He also had a merry time mocking Brexiteers who probably didn’t know what the WTO was a few months ago but who now think it’s the fount of all wisdom. (One of the oddities of the Brexit debate is that the WTO is now being praised by protesters rather than denounced by them.) Anna Soubry, a former Tory who has joined the new Independent Group, was the most withering about the Brexiteers who have taken over her party. (Shortly after listening to her I queued up for a cup of coffee behind Peter Bone, one of the leading Brexiteers, who has taken to wearing dirty old trainers, as if he is preparing for a career as a beggar.) Hilary Benn pointed to the logical contradiction at the heart of Mrs May’s policy: why is it reasonable for her to keep putting the same question to the House, when it has been rejected twice by huge margins, and not reasonable to hold a second referendum after a relatively narrow vote in 2016? And, on the government side, Michael Gove, secretary of state for agriculture, proved, yet again, that he is the best debater in the House.
The second thing to remember is Walter Bagehot’s dictum about parliamentary government being “government by discussion”. Discussion can make narrow minds narrower and fevered minds more feverish: this week Sir Christopher Chope, another arch-Brexiteer, even told the House that, if Jeremy Corbyn were to bring a vote of no confidence in the government, he would consider voting in favour, a move that might bring about the collapse of his own government and lead to the election of the most left-wing prime minister the country has ever had. Madness! But it can also make broad minds broader and reflective minds more reflective. I’m struck by the number of serious people who are having serious thoughts about some of their most basic beliefs: former Thatcherites who are thinking about the failures of the free market that produced so much alienation in the north; former Blairites who are thinking about the cosy political cartel that deepened that alienation; and former establishment types who are thinking about how to revivify British democracy. There is more serious thinking about the importance of things like devolution, place-making and community-building than there has been for years.
The political class has focused obsessively on the formation of a small new independent grouping of MPs. But there is something bigger and more interesting going on in the broad centre of British politics: the collapse of old certainties and a desperate attempt to produce a new synthesis. The great question is whether the emerging centre ground can get its act together in time—or whether the future belongs to the likes of Messrs Corbyn and Bone.
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DURING THESE debates I often found myself pondering an article by Matthew d’Ancona in the Guardian about what Britain’s greatest historian of “that marvellous microcosm, the House of Commons”, Sir Lewis Namier (pictured below), might have made of the latest parliamentary shenanigans. Sir Lewis had no time for the idea that politicians are moved by abstract things like political ideologies, let alone nonsense about the good of humanity. They are moved purely by self-interest—by the desire for place, position and preferment, and by the endless play of faction and connection. One of the reasons why this Jewish émigré from Poland liked Britain so much is that it was more honest than other countries about the scramble for preferment. And one of the reasons why he was so preoccupied by the House of Commons was that he regarded it as the perfect cockpit for “battle, drive and dominion”.
At first blush the Brexit crisis proves that Sir Lewis was wrong: a growing list of Conservative politicians have given up high office (and the chauffeur and salary that go with it) in order to fight for an abstract ideal of sovereignty. But I wonder? The striking thing about the Brexit rebels is how puffed up they are: look at Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson marching off to Downing Street to lay down the law to the prime minister or Sir Bill Cash delivering long perorations to parliament about sub-clause “Z” of the European Treaty.
A Namierite analysis of the Brexiteers suggests that they consist of three different groups of people who, for different reasons, have decided that their egos are best served by defying their own government. First: has-beens. Mr Duncan Smith was one of the most disastrous leaders the Conservative Party has had. Sir John Redwood’s attempt to become leader is now remembered only for the picture of his supporters, looking like inmates from a lunatic asylum on an away day. Having been put out to pasture they have now discovered a way to get themselves back on the television and radio. Second: low-flyers. The likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Steve Baker and Mr Paterson were never going to reach the heights of the regular Conservative Party, Mr Rees-Mogg because he’s too absurd and Messrs Baker and Paterson because they are too mediocre. But the establishment of a parallel party structure has given them a chance to wield power and peacock around. Third: ambitious types such as Boris Johnson and Johnny Mercer who think that they can ride the tiger of populism to the heights of power.
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I THINK ONE of the great themes of modern politics will be the struggle between the super-rich and the middle classes. Old British families will seethe when they see places in the best public schools and houses in the best parts of London being brought up by oiky foreign oligarchs. One of the biggest problems facing the Tory Party (presuming that it can avoid being torn apart by the madness of Brexit, a big assumption) is the hollowing out of the middle class. You can already see journalists at the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, who would normally sing the praises of free markets in education and property, complaining that they are being forced to send their children to state schools and live in garrets. Conservatism flourishes when you have a broad middle class with roots in the country (and the countryside), not when you have a global oligarchy which treats the world as a shopping mall (Eton for secondary school, Yale for university and a chalet in the Alps for skiing).
It is also a huge opportunity for the far left. The more intelligent Corbynistas realise that the biggest thing going for them is “status dysphoria”: all those young people who have seen their parents get richer throughout their lives, with soaring house prices, solid pensions and plenty of money for foreign holidays, but who, having done all the right things, worked hard at school and graduated from university, find themselves clinging onto the edges of the corporate world and living in a bed-sit in Clapham, or further out, while executives pocket multi-million-pound bonuses and newly built tower blocks in the centre of town sit largely empty, acting as Swiss bank accounts in the sky for foreign investors.
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ANOTHER GREAT struggle that will define the future is the struggle between the super-rich and the merely rich. We can see this in the vicious fight between Tate Modern and the residents of four glass-walled flats next to the gallery. Tate Modern has constructed a viewing platform that provides a “unique, free, 360-degree view of London” (pictured). The owners of the apartments are understandably furious that the platform allows the tourists to watch them getting dressed and eating their breakfast. Having spent £4m a flat so that they can live in glass boxes in the sky, with spectacular views over London, they are now reduced to the status of animals in a high-rise zoo. The Tate administration has suggested that the residents can simply draw the blinds to avoid unwelcome eyes and a High Court judge, in ruling that the residents’ impressive views come “at a price in terms of privacy”, has suggested that they can always buy net curtains. In other words, take that you super-rich bastards, we museum curators and High Court judges are on the side of ordinary people!
I don’t have a dog in this fight but I think I’ve come up with a way for the super-rich to fight back: why not project hard-core pornography onto the walls of your glass eyrie whenever you’re out at work, filling your coffers with yet more money, or flying around the world? This might make Tate Modern think twice about funnelling tourists onto its viewing platform. As an added bonus it might force the mandarins of modernism to engage in an agonised debate about what can be described as offensive in our benighted times.
My so-called career started in the mid-70s in the punk era. I was 17 when punk arrived and its spirit influenced me profoundly. Anyone could play music or be a photographer – anybody could be anything. One of my first pictures was of Joe Strummer. I tagged along with a journalist friend and knocked on his motel door. A week later I was hanging out with the Jam in Malmö. I worked for many years as a rock photographer, and then as a photojournalist in Nicaragua and South Africa, but today I mostly work with classical musicians. My photographs try to bring that rock’n’roll energy into classical music and opera.
This photo was taken on a sunny day in Stockholm at the Drottningholm Palace theatre, part of one of the Swedish king and queen’s residences. It’s a fantastic 18th-century building, a Unesco heritage site which hosts an opera festival each summer.
I work there often so I was given exclusive access to use the backstage areas. I love this place. I even made a book about it many years ago, and I know every corner of the theatre.
I was shooting the cover for Martin Fröst’s Mozart Clarinet Concerto for BIS Records, and we chose the location because we wanted the ambience of something old and beautiful. The theatre dates from the time that Mozart was alive. Fröst is arguably the most famous clarinet player in the world and we’re good friends. He loves to be photographed, which is convenient for me. You could call him vain but, like the Beatles, he knows the importance of a strong image.
We were shooting backstage but Martin was really stiff. He might like to be photographed but he’s overly conscious of how he will come out in the pictures, so it’s hard to get him off balance. When I shoot dancers I always want to catch them off balance to capture the movement. Similarly, portraits need to be captured in this in-between.
I had heard that fashion photographers get models to make lots of faces and move around to get relaxed, so I told Martin to start jumping about. We’d been taking photos in the shadows because the sunlight coming through the window was really harsh. I started photographing him as he was playing around making silly faces, and snapped this as he stepped into the sunlight.
The second I took it I was thinking, “I hope this comes out well.” I looked in the camera afterwards and it seemed really freaky. My favourite part of the picture is his eye: a little black dot. It has always reminded me of Edvard Munch’s Scream. It also reminds me of my most famous photograph, Iggy Pop giving the middle finger. The composition is similar but instead of the middle finger there’s a clarinet.
Mats Bäcker and clarinettist Martin Fröst at Backer’s exhibition Photograph: Courtesy: Mats Bäcker
This crazy picture didn’t make the album cover. BIS are conservative, and it was felt that the audience for classical music are as well. But it was the biggest picture of my exhibition Mats Bäcker Classics, where it was blown up to a 2x2 metre print. Martin was at the opening at the Concert Hall in Stockholm and thought it was great fun, he really likes it. There’s a good photo of me and Martin standing in front of it, screaming back at the photo.
I only found classical music later in my life. The Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm put an ad in the paper saying they wanted a new photographer. My friends urged me to apply but I thought it sounded boring. I remember thinking, “Why would I work at an opera house?” But I did apply, I got the job, and the first opera I shot was Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. I had no idea what it was about but I was in tears while shooting because I was so touched by the music and the story. It was mind-blowing. I remember thinking that I’d photographed hundreds of rock concerts and never been touched by anything like that.
Opera is very photogenic, the body language and stage design are grand and the light is fantastic – it’s served on a plate for me to photograph. I stayed for 10 years at the opera and then went freelance, shooting stages all over Scandinavia. Since that day, dance, opera and classical music have been my life.
Born: Hagfors, Sweden 1958 Trained: MA in Photography at Konstfack, the University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. Influences: “Irving Penn, Anton Corbijn, Pennie Smith” High point: “Quitting my job at the opera and starting to work as a freelancer again.” Low point: “Getting depressed during my last few years at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. I got bored shooting the same stage every night” Top tip: “Look. Practise. Specialise. Immerse yourself in what you are interested in, then you will take good photos.”
Our partners at Columbia University School of the Arts have announced its Advanced Photography Intensive, which aims to engages students in all elements of photographic practice and the development of a portfolio. A combination of technical tutorials, individual meetings with internationally renowned artists and art professionals (Thomas Roma, John Pilson, Elinor Carucci, Michael Spano, Susan Kismaric and Vince Aletti), as well as a series of seminars and group critiques, provide students with the tools they need to advance professionally and further develop the core elements of their practice.
The Advanced Photography Intensive creates an exceptional workshop environment where students have 24-hour access to traditional and digital facilities, coupled with daily hands-on assistance from experienced faculty and staff, culminating in a group exhibition at the LeRoy Neiman Gallery. Students are expected to produce work independently throughout the six-week term and fully dedicate their time and efforts to the course.
The course is designed for several distinct types of students: exceptional undergraduates passionate about photography, college graduates preparing to apply for MFA programmes, experienced photographers looking to gain knowledge of the photographic tradition and its advanced techniques, and seasoned artists and teachers wishing to rigorously develop their practice through a critical dialogue with faculty and other students.
For more information on the features of the course, and how to gain admission click here.
Seeing a photo of a big, juicy burger (or Beyond Burger), with crisp green lettuce and tiny droplets of water on thickly sliced tomato is enough to make your mouth water. The same applies when you’re watching a Coke commercial, when the fizz and spritz from the drink is so apparent that you suddenly find yourself thirsty. Food imagery is powerful, and making it look good is an important job. In fact, it’s an entire career all its own.
Diana Jeffra, who lives in Virginia, has been a food stylist for the past nine years. While a photographer is the person who takes pictures of the food, Jeffra’s job is to cook the food and set up the shot. Whether the photo is going to end up in a magazine, advertisement or product box, or if she’s helping shoot a commercial, the mission is the same: Leave the viewer craving whatever it is they’re looking at.
On the summer day that I called her to learn more about her career, she was on set styling a turkey for a Thanksgiving spread for a local magazine. Yes, the summer heat was sweltering outside, but on set, it was Nov. 24. Doing print work like this is Jeffra’s bread and butter, so to speak. “I prefer the pace of still [photos]. I find that the pace of shooting for big commercials is too fast for me,” she said.
In addition to styling food for magazines, she has worked with many brands that are likely in your pantry or fridge, such as Betty Crocker, Sabra, Justin’s and General Mills. But Jeffra wasn’t always a food stylist. It took a slight career pivot — and a lot of drive — to end up where she is today.
How to become a food stylist
Jeffra said she has long worked with food, just in vastly different ways than she does now. “All my jobs growing up were in restaurants,” she said. “I worked as a dishwasher, steaming crabs, shucking oysters … that kind of stuff.” Clearly she’s someone who doesn’t mind getting her hands dirty, a skill that would come on handy later on in her career.
In college, Jeffra majored in graphic design, and after she graduated started working for an ad agency that specialized in food service and hospitality. It was her job to retouch images from photo shoots and put them in different formats, such as banner ads. Jeffra said that while she liked her job, she felt a bit antsy sitting in front of a computer all day. At the same time, she started asking questions about what was happening on the photo shoot sets to learn more about how they worked. “The creative director told me that there was a photographer and then someone who comes in whose job it was to set up food for the camera,” Jeffra said. “I remember thinking, ‘Wait, that’s a thing?’”
Ice cream is one of the trickiest subjects to shoot. Here, a perfectly drippy cone styled by Jeffra.
When Jeffra started researching how to become a food stylist herself, she figured the best way to find out was to ask someone who did it, so she invited a food stylist in her area, Lisa Cherkasky, to lunch. (Pro job tip for anything you want to do in life: Find yourself a mentor.) “Lisa gave me the best advice, which was that it’s important to know how to make food for the camera,” Jeffra said. Yes, Lisa told her, it’s important to know about photography — like how to use lighting — but it’s also important to know how to make food from scratch (quickly!) that’s made for the camera.
Shucking oysters was one thing, but learning how to get food photo-ready was a whole other skill set. To beef up her knowledge, Jeffra enrolled in a cooking and hospitality program at a local community college. “The restaurant chefs I worked with while in cooking school were completely supportive of me wanting to be a food stylist and would allow me to come in and take photos,” she said. Eventually, she was able to start landing clients and building a portfolio, which led to booking more jobs.
What food styling actually looks like
A day in the life of a food stylist starts before arriving on set. The first order of business is to buy all the ingredients needed to make the food. “Typically before the shoot, I’ll get a shot list, listing all the photos they want to have,” Jeffra said. This helps guide how she’ll cook and style the food. For example, in some Thanksgiving food photos, the turkey isn’t cooked fully inside, but Jeffra said for the shoot she was currently working on, the shot list indicated that the turkey needed to be carved in some photos, so this meant Jeffra would have to cook it all the way through.
Jeffra typically has a call time, so she knows when to arrive on set. Then, she gets to work cooking and styling the food for each shot before a photographer shoots it. Attention to detail is a must. Jeffra is often plucking tiny hairs off raspberries or misting perfectly sized droplets onto produce. Sure, a photographer could edit or add these details later while retouching, but she does as much as she can herself so that they don’t have to. “It makes it easier for the photographer and it kind of makes them love you more,” she said.
Not all of the food Jeffra styles is actually edible: Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. For example, on TikTok, she showed that buttercream (a whipped icing) is often used in place of ice cream for shoots because it won’t melt. But if Jeffra is styling ice cream for an actual ice cream brand, there’s no fake ice cream allowed ― that would be false advertising.
“Ice cream and cheese are the hardest foods to shoot,” Jeffra said. “Both have to be melted in a certain way, and with cheese, some types become translucent when they melt, like Swiss cheese.”
Jeffra said her job isn’t always glamorous, either. The other day, she found herself making instant mashed potatoes using a water fountain because there wasn’t a full kitchen on set.
A strawberry honey cake that Jeffra styled.
Tips for taking your food photos to the next level
Maybe you don’t want to be a food stylist. Maybe you just want to give your food blog or Instagram photos an upgrade. Is there anything you can do to level up your pics without resorting to buttercream and half-baked turkeys? Jeffra is happy to offer up a few tips. One is to use fresh ingredients, especially when it comes to produce and herbs. This is when the colors are most vibrant.
“Adding little droplets of water on food or drinks, like on ... a Coke can, makes it look super fresh and refreshing too,” Jeffra said, offering up another one of her tried-and-true tricks. For some foods, like freshly baked rolls or a hamburger bun, Jeffra said that adding a little oil can give a nice sheen.
It’s also important to consider your lighting, as it can transform a food from looking flat to showing different dimensions and details. So if you really want to get the perfect shot, you just might need your friend to shine their phone flashlight on your food while you snap your pic.
If you love playing with your food, following in Jeffra’s footsteps and becoming a food stylist might just be the perfect career for you. It takes hard work to get there and it certainly isn’t easy, but Jeffra said she’s glad she put in the effort. “I can’t imagine doing anything else,” she said. “I love everything about it.”
THE PARADOXES of Brexit multiply by the day. Brexit was supposed to allow Britain to take back control of its destiny. This week a British prime minister sat in a windowless room in Brussels while 27 European countries debated the country’s future in the council chamber (though Donald Tusk, the European Council’s president, did nip out halfway through the meeting to keep her updated). Brexit was supposed to restore the sovereignty of parliament. This week a British prime minister, borrowing the language of demagogues down the ages, berated MPs for not enacting the “will of the people”. Brexit was supposed to force the political class to venture out of its bubble and rediscover the rest of the country. The political class—journalists as well as politicians—is more navel-gazing than ever. I could go on but I think you get the general drift….
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IN THE Blair-Cameron years politicians competed to be as bland as possible. Today they compete to be as grotesque as possible. The age of identikit politicians (which culminated in the Jedward that was Cameron-Clegg) has been replaced by the age of caricatures.
Jeremy Corbyn is one of George Orwell’s sandal-wearing pacifists drunk on his own moral purity. His office is full of upper-class socialists who fell in love with the working-class while attending some of the world’s most expensive schools. Theresa May is an archetypical grammar-school girl who thinks that she’ll get a gold star if she keeps re-writing the same essay in neater handwriting. John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, is a classic puffed-up little man who likes to remind MPs of the importance of brevity in labyrinthine sentences that include, in no particular order, words like “sedentary”, “chuntering” and “loquaciousness”. The hard-core Brexiteers are divided into two types: golf-club bores who could sort it all out if they were put in charge and mumbling monomaniacs who keep dragging the conversation around to the same point.
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THE CARICATURES on both the left and the right have one powerful argument on their side: that they represent “real Labour” or “real Conservatism”. The left’s trump card has always been that “real” Labour voters are coal-miners and steel-workers—and that “real” Labour policies have always been about redistributing income and nationalising things. The right can’t summon up a “real” Tory voter in quite the same way—the Party survived its aristocratic past by discovering “real Tories” in every social class—but it has made up for this by emphasising “real Tory” values: flag-waving nationalism, suspicion of foreigners, belief in British exceptionalism.
More moderate elements in each party have always been haunted by the fear that they are betraying the real party. Tony Blair had to resort to a combination of top-down control (policing not just what MPs said, but also what they wore) and cynical gesture politics (the hunting ban). Theresa May has repeatedly given in to the Brexiteers despite her realisation, as a rising politician, that a Tory party keen to recruit new members needed to shed its image as “the nasty party”, rather than becoming a rest home for elderly cranks.
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THIS WEEK provided yet further proof—as if we needed any—that the country’s political class is in dismal shape. Britain not only has the worst prime minister and the worst leader of the opposition it has ever had. It has the worst cabinet and shadow cabinet as well. For much of the democratic era Britain contrived to send the most talented members of its various sub-divisions into parliament: Winston Churchill (pictured left) from the landed elite; Harold Wilson (pictured centre), Richard Crossman, Anthony Crosland from the intellectual elite; Ernest Bevin, Nye Bevan, Jim Callaghan (pictured right) from the working classes. Now it not only sends less talent but leaves much of the talent that it does send stuck on the back benches.
That said, I’m sceptical of the idea popular in business circles that all the great talent has migrated to the business sector and all we need to do is to recruit a few more business types and Britain will be on the road to recovery. I’m struck by how many business types are essentially private-sector bureaucrats who spend their (very well-paid) time holding meetings and recycling memos. Certainly, the performance of those business types, such as Archie Norman, who have gone into politics is far from inspiring.
I think there is a deeper problem with the nature of Britain’s governing class as a whole: a problem more to do with the corruption of its soul than with the allocation of talent between various sectors. The governing class has lost its sense of public service and become obsessed with lining its own pockets. Not that long ago retiring politicians spent their retirements cultivating their gardens and giving sage advice in the House of Lords. Now they join the ranks of the super-rich, not just stuffing their pockets with gold, which I can understand, but also devoting their spare time socialising with billionaires, playboys and dynasts, which I find incomprehensible. A good part of the appeal of Jeremy Corbyn is that, for all his failures of intellect and judgment, he is at least a self-denying type who lives an austere life.
The loss of a sense of public service is also driven by two more profound structural changes. The first is the advance of the division of labour. Academics write for other academics. Business people are overwhelmed by an ever-multiplying list of metrics (many of them imposed by the government). The second is a profound loss of cultural self-confidence. For all the differences between Tories and Labour the governing class used to share a common sense of cultural values: they might disagree about who got what but they agreed about the virtues of Western (and particularly English) civilisation. Now that those common cultural values have been dissolved by the acids of academic fashion and interest-group politics it is much easier to abandon public life entirely and concentrate on making money.
Greenwich+Docklands International Festival’s full 2023 programme showcases world-class theatre, art installations, spectacle and dance in locations across London. More than 35 events, including two world premieres and 14 UK premieres, are inspired by the theme Acts of Hope, inviting Londoners to come together for uplifting moments of shared wonder and connection
