



1 / 10 Chevron Chevron © Martin Parr/Magnum Photos Disneyland, Tokyo, Japan, from “Common Sense,” 1998.

The title of Martin Parr’s newest photography book, “Real Food,” which is out from Phaidon this month, makes it sound like the manifesto of a clean-eating, weight-dropping, soul-lifting life-style guru. But the photos in Parr’s collection have no resemblance to the aspirational-rustic stylings that dominate food photography today. Here, instead, is a glowing gelatin dessert, its layers stacked like the strata of an undiscovered toxic planet; and here is a carnival turkey leg being unceremoniously ripped apart into fleshy pink strings, with the carnality of both the leg and its predator on display; and here is an antiseptic grocery-store display of bananas nestled neatly on Styrofoam trays, growing brown spots beneath plastic wrap. This food isn’t “real” because it’s somehow more authentic or pure than other food; it’s real because it exists in the world and people eat it.

Parr has a way of revealing the absurd in the mundane. Whether he’s photographing sunburned vacationers posing in front of European tourist traps, Japanese commuters dozing on the subway, or white-gloved garden parties in his native England, his bright flash exposes the stories we tell ourselves through the way we look at and appear in the world. The photos in “Real Food” were taken in dozens of countries, in the course of almost twenty years, but far-flung resonances arise. Mass-market packaging screams out brand names, and price stickers imply that the calories you’ll receive are actually worth slightly more than the money you’ll hand over. Neon-pink sugared doughnuts in Mexico City are the cousins of thick-frosted treats in Bangkok. Sprinkles abound in all corners of the globe. A sausage from Australia or Luxembourg looks very much like a sausage from France or the U.S.A. Maybe these similarities are a sign of an irrepressible capitalist monoculture, or maybe they’re a sign of a primal desire for the colorful, the exciting, the plenty, the hygienic. Or, likely, they’re a bit of both.

How, exactly, did that long green bean, sitting like a lone soldier on a paper plate, shine above all others in the “any other vegetable” category of some local fair? Are we to assume that Jesus Christ himself has sent us that can of Spam? There is something a little puzzling, a little shocking, quite amusing, and consistently unappetizing in each of these photos. Food in its many guises, reduced to colors and shapes and textures, is a garish sight, but it’s hard to look away. A heaping plate, slopped with gravy, looks more than a bit like vomit, and yet it’s easy to imagine that a fork plunged straight into its center would come up satisfyingly full.