Phagomania: The Burger At The Gates Of Dawn

Summer psychedelia hits Phagomania hard as we trip out to Brittney Meyer’s photographic oddities and wonder whether they might be too much for even this column

Feature by Lewis MacDonald | 05 Aug 2014

“Far out man. Far f**king out” proclaimed the burnt-out slacker known as The Dude from his bath in The Big Lebowski. Branded as quite possibly the laziest man in Los Angeles county, you could easily imagine the work of fellow LA-based photographer Brittney Meyer hanging on his wall.

But what unashamed oddities are these? Far from matching The Dude’s sloth-like stylings, Brittney has been blazing away on a vendetta against the stoic conventions of food photography. And when we say that, we mean crafting images such as flying SPAM against a cataclysmic backdrop, or burning ice lollies blazing a chocolatey trail across the moon. Catapulting everyday foodstuffs into freakish scenarios is Brittney's forte, and she unsurprisingly describes surrealism and fantasy as key influences.

She explains: “I am interested in the function of food photography to create desire for consumption.

“Because of the materials used in styling, food photographers make their subject matter inedible by making it appear delectable.” There is certainly a solid irony in regular, commercial food photography that the food is often interfered with in bizarre ways or painted with thick layers of varnish in order to make it look edible. Brittney's art takes those conventions and laughs at them through a fog of primary colours and unexpected glitter.

Brittney also sees her work as exploring the visual language of the meme, often taking her photographic work to a new level by creating beguiling animated gifs. “As a meme, the food object is glorified and at the same time satirised through repetition,” she proposes.

But hang on, isn’t this in danger of sliding into a load of postmodernist gibberish, hipster posturing, and wasted food? To that charge, Brittney retorts: “People seem to want to label everything; I'm just going to keep making work that I am interested in.”

There certainly seems to be some method behind the madness, but that’s to be expected. After all, how else are you going to end up with burgers, SPAM and ice lollies floating harmoniously in a fantasy-scape? While the work might match The Dude’s style, it takes a lot of work, man.

http://brittneymeyer.tumblr.com