Food Photography

Tony Le Duc, Food Photography since 1985 is a richly-illustrated catalogue of images spanning a quarter-century of food photography.

This book is published in conjunction with the retrospective of food photographer Tony Le Duc at FoMu in Antwerp.

The work of Tony Le Duc, a pioneer in the field of international food photography, proves that photographs of vegetables, pig’s cheeks or bouillabaisse can be given a personal touch.

Nowhere in this book will you see a single plate, at most the suggestion of one. By playing with light, colour, texture and intensity, Le Duc creates very personal compositions that blur the lines between photography and art.

Pieter Van Doveren, food writer for Knack Weekend and Trends, wrote the accompanying story. The result is a personal catalogue of experiences. Since 1985 Van Doveren and Le Duc have formed a culinary tandem, establishing the foundations of food writing in the Flemish media. They have travelled all over the world, worked together in the studio and, more than anything else, experienced some unforgettable adventures in the process.

Johannes Van Dam, The Netherlands’ culinary guru, owns the largest collection of cookbooks in Western Europe. For this catalogue, he wrote a piece about the history of illustrated cookbooks since the 16th century.

His conclusion: cookbooks have always been around, it is impossible to imagine our world without them.

Elviera Velghe, curator of Fomu, Antwerp, wrote the foreword.    

"Did professional food photography, created as a means to visualizing recipes, influence public opinion ? Or did the greater availability of ingredients, the popularity of world cuisine and the desire for more tempting dishes – in other words: the need to pay more attention to food – make the use of photography necessary ? It is the story of the chicken and the egg: which came first ?”