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If you don’t know Todd Selby’s work, you should.

Visit Selby at his website.

Comment. Let us know what you think.

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About the book

The Selby Is in Your Place was conceived when fashion and interiors photographer Todd Selby began taking portraits of dynamic and creative people—authors, musicians, artists, and designers—in their home environments and posting them on his web site. Nosy by nature, he wanted to see how personal style was reflected in private spaces. Lucky for us, he found his answer in the color-rich and eclectic quarters of a diverse group of subjects, including Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler, Faris Rotter, Andre Walker, and Olivier Zahm, in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Tokyo, Sydney, and London. Each profile is accompanied by Selby’s watercolor portraits of the subjects and objects from their homes, and illustrated questionnaires, which Selby asks each sitter to fill out. This book consists of over thirty profiles, many of which have never-before-seen, selected exclusively for the book. The result is a collection of unique spaces bursting with energy and personality that together create a colorful hodgepodge of inspirational interiors.

About the author
Todd Selby is an interiors, fashion, and portrait photographer and painter. His photographs can be regularly seen in British Vogue, Vogue Hommes International, Dazed and Confused, Another Magazine, Nylon, New York Magazine, and the London Sunday Times.

Lesley Arfin is the New York-based author of Dear Diary and the former editor of Missbehave magazine.

(from Abrams website)

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The Center for Creative Imaging was a short-lived (1991-1994)  school owned by Eastman Kodak. Its purpose was to teach digital imaging and related subject matter to artists, design professionals, photographers and production staff. Faculty members included Milton Glaser, Gregory Heisler, Graham Nash and Paul Davis. Katrin Eismann started as their first intern, A couple of years later the Photo Diva became the CCI Director of Education. Today Katrin is a well-respected Photoshop expert, teacher, author and chair of the Masters of Professional Studies in Digital Photography at the School of Visual Arts. I taught a week long class in creativity.

We spent a couple of days working on storytelling. Stories need characters and we found a way of developing them. I sent the class out to stalk people in Camden. Each student agreed to follow a person who struck their interest for about an hour. Based on the information gathered, students were encouraged to imagine their subject’s name, their occupation, their relationships with spouses and children, their purchases, etc. it was meant to be a kind of fictional reality. When classmates reassembled at CCI they named their subject, wrote a short biography, explained the conflicts and triumphs of their character’s life, and much more.

I invented some scenarios and we placed the characters into the stories. One was about two high school classmates who meet for the first time in twenty years. They recognized each other while waiting in line to board a windjammer sloop in Camden Harbor. Staying in character, we did improvisations. Some of the stories were ordinary; others were edgy. It was fun. It was yeasty.

We developed dozens of ideas for photographic storytelling that may not have developed without this gross assignment. It was gross because stalking is an invasion of privacy and illegal. I don’t know what got into me. Today we could sit in a Starbucks and have similar results without committing a crime.

I also participated in the stalking. I chose the tallest woman on Main Street and followed her into a bookstore. I could see the top of her head above the bookshelves. I heard her speak. The voice was familiar. I brazenly joined her in the aisle. She said, “hello-ooooooh,” warmly. I instantly recognized Julia Child. We spoke for a few minutes. I told her what we were doing. She said in her highly recognizable, unique and imitable voice. “How daring. People follow me all the time. I don’t like it very much.” I apologized. Ms. Child beamed a smile and carried on with her day.

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Nope! This article is not necessarily about food photography, but it could be.

He sat alone in his grandmother’s tiny kitchen facing what most people would see as a plate of lumpy mashed potatoes mounted on chipped dinner plates with  a Greek ornamental motif on the perimeter. The seven year old saw the potatoes as snow covered mountains. He transported himself into a Yellowstone winter complete with wolves, bison, elks, and otters, ice, wind, and blizzards.

The boy created a tunnel by digging with his fork and supporting the roof with toothpicks. He arranged the canned vegetables into a long winding railroad; gray-green pea, orange carrot cube, gray-green pea, orange carrot cube, pea, carrot – six inches long. Continuing his fantasy, his train disappeared into the potatoes. The engine appeared on the other side of the plate creating the illusion that the it was traveling through the tunnel.

He folded the linen napkin into a triangle and covered the lower part of his face. His eyebrows raised complimenting the sneer hidden by the mask. He lept onto his imaginary galloping palamino and robbed the train. He scooped a large blob of mashed potatoes from the serving dish. The sounds of gunshots created an avalanche as he threw potatoes at the gray-green peas and orange carrot cubes. The tunnel collapsed.

“It is disrespectful to play with your food!” exclaimed Grandma.

He did not hear. He was absorbed in creating his story. He covered the entire set with Pride of the Farm Catsup dollops and ate every morsel. He picked up the remnants of a slice of white bread and rubbed a clown’s face in the red sauce.

How did playing with food contribute to your own creative growth? As a child? As an adult? As an adult encouraging a child?

Create stories. Set up a situation with a child. Perhaps start playing with the food yourself. Offer them the food to play with. Be inventive. Encourage creativity. Withhold the voice of the adult. Make sure no one stifles the play. Make sure no one says, “Don’t play with your food!”

This may make an interesting short video or multi-media piece. it would be best to play without an attachment to an outcome.

Do it your way. Send me your story and/or low res jpegs.  I will post them on this blog for you. iansummers@heartstorming.com

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For more about playing with your food, see my post about Matthew Klein.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Played With Food

Milan, Italy 1527-1593

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