PAULINE DANIEL
Series realized and initiated in France in 2014 with the Food Banks on the theme of the "Fight against waste" and continued in 2021/2022 with exotic fruits endemic to Brazil during a creative residency in Rio de Janeiro at the invitation of the French Embassy. The issue of food waste concerns us all, including culinary photographers who are led to waste food and often find themselves the first prescribers of the dictatorship of Beauty. Accustomed to working with the ultimate in fresh produce, the artist wanted the series to be made entirely of spoiled products considered unfit for sale. Thus, in this set of images, Pauline Daniel wished in turn to aesthetically reveal the damaged fruits and vegetables that are about to be thrown away. Both during the first work sessions in France and later in Brazil, the photographer sought to bring out the real intrinsic flavor of each product by dissecting the food and working meticulously in the darkness of the photo studio. The images, often constructed in diptychs, offer the two possible facets of the same food; the damaged raw side and then its worked version revealing its inner brilliance. The viewer/consumer is thus invited to question the tyranny of appearances which turns out to be so deceptive; once peeled and processed, the blackened or necrotic fruits and vegetables are revealed not only fit for consumption but also worthy of the tastiest dishes. Borrowing from the register of seduction, the images pose the question of attraction and repulsion and propose a path of thought towards the notion of "Beauty within".
Acknowledgements : Food Banks of France, Embassy of France in Brazil of Rio de Janeiro, CEASA Rio de Janeiro, Alain Arnaudet.
ABOUT PAULINE DANIEL
Pauline Daniel studied Plastic Arts at the University of Paris I, then graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d'Arles in 2002. Inscribing her artistic work in the world of the edible, the work of Pauline Daniel appeals to our collective and cultural unconscious and to our imagination. Poetic, engaged, borrowed from fantasy and sometimes feminism, her universe intrigues, transports and questions the spectator around contemporary issues related to food but also in a more general way to our relationship to beauty and its representation. Her work has been published extensively and has won numerous awards such as the Foodprint Culinary photo Award in Belgium in 2019, the FIPC Grand Prix 2019 on the theme of Audacity for her black series in homage to the painter Soulages, the Grand Prix Milano in 2015 of the International Festival of Culinary Photography, the First Prize Food of the International Color Award 2015, the First Prize of the Photographs of the Year 2014 in the Still Life category. His work has been exhibited at La Friche de la Belle de Mai in Marseille in 2020 and at the French Pavilion of the Milan World Fair on the theme Feeding the Planet in 2015/2016.