Food Porn in Visual Art

“Images of seduction, of foods displayed in stereotypical but wholly artificial perfection, destined to remain forever out of reach and unobtainable”.

This blog site serves to explore and illustrate the concept of Food Porn in Visual Art, in particular through photography, paintings and video. How is Food and Porn symbolically connected? How does this visual art form tell us about what we think and feel about the food we see and eat? What makes us want to consume food porn?

What is Food Porn?

Food Porn is the depiction and sexualisation of mouthwatering images in visual art and media in a way that is evocative as one would view pornography. Food Porn, or also known as gastro-porn, is created to provoke emotion or to trigger a desire to eat.

Alexander Cockburn in 1977 in an article for the New York Review of Books comments that the use of the term food porn “heightens the excitement and also the sense of the unattainable”.

How is Food Porn Like Real Porn?

Licking my lips...fantasizing...the thoughts tantalizing my curiosity. Give it to me!!! I want more. Have I attracted your interest yet?

One could confuse these thoughts and words being that of a person lusting over food or some form of physical desire. But beyond all needs and wants there in front of me is the very tempting and visually spectacular photograph of a Chocolate Cake, far removed from that which one would possibly consider or dream of preparing at home.

So what is the connection between Food Porn and Real Porn?

Can food images provoke as much satisfaction?

Firstly, I see food porn as food presented in a way that one would show porn. I see food porn as food given extraordinary focus in a visually interesting elaborate way which causes you to fantasise or lust for it…just the same way you would view it as if it were porn.

A loaded subject, yes, whether you agree or not, food and sex have long been linked together.

In a Harper’s magazine article in 2005 titled Debbie Does Salad: The Food Network at the Frontiers of Pornography Frederick Kaufman interviewed porn still photographer Barbara Nitke who pointed out her opinion on the connection between porn and food.

“You watch porn saying, yes, I could do that. You dream that you’re there, but you know you couldn’t...That’s exactly the way the porn thing works. The sex, of course, is impossible to replicate”.

Anne E. McBride in her article Food Porn for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (Vol.10, No.1 pp.38-46) further supports this ideology by stating that “as with sex porn, we enjoy watching what we ourselves presumably cannot do”.

Whether it is glossy photographs of food or food provoking feelings of pleasure, food porn is eye candy! 

Let’s face it…the term food porn is sexy, provides appeal and gets you thinking.

How Food Porn is Created

Extreme close ups. Blistering, shiny textures. The end result…a spectacular presentation of food at its most indulgent.

The production, the techniques and the conventions of actual porn have strong resemblances to that of food porn. 

Carefully positioned close up shots of artfully decorated food, artificial perfection, choreographed to create a masterpiece of pure food porn. The Skinny Gourmet, a food blog site, provides a clever analogy when they comment “the production of the photograph may involve aesthetic styles borrowed from the pornography industry”.

Whilst there have always been elements of pornography in food itself, whether phallic or suggestive, the ‘pornographic’ feel is enhanced by the presentation and construction of the food. The elevation of images, photographers zooming in on the food, so much you can see every fine detail, makes you feel as if you are having a special experience with it. Nothing is left to the imagination.

The photographer is drawing us in to tease us, provoke our emotional senses, and connect us with the food, providing an intimate gaze.

The tantalization begins now!

Is What You See Making You Lust for More?

Ever heard the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”? After watching the Mason, Le Big Bob Video, I’m thinking about all the thousands of different words, thoughts, feelings and emotions going on in my head and body.

The melted cheese in the tortilla, the steam coming off the meat patties on the grill, the creamy pasta, the fresh and vibrant looking fruit and vegetables and what about the texture, smoothness of the moist chocolate cake.

Is it making you want to eat now?

Does what you see enrich the visual senses so much that your body is telling you I want that? Our growing obsession with images of glamorously presented food is making us eat!

Food or what we have come to know as food porn does have immense powers of persuasion. A visual image full of colour exaggerates realism to the extent of creating visual stimulation so compelling one to desire, lust or want food.

Deirdre Barrett, a Harvard Medical School author and psychologist suggests that “the part of your brain that governs self-control fails to kick in with food porn the way it does with actual food”. It’s no wonder when there exists so much visual representation of tempting food that your eyes open wide and your lips begin to salivate.

Therefore there is no doubt that the more extravagant, the more indulgent and appealing a photo of food appears, it certainly has the power to elicit us to want to eat more.

"Food was never meant to be experienced from just a visual perspective," says Amy Sousa, an anthropologist at the Hartman Group, a research consulting group that tracks food culture. "When we see food, we need to fill in the blanks of what it will taste like. Merely looking makes for an unsatisfying experience."

"Food, like eroticism, starts with the eyes, but there are people who will put just about anything in their mouth" Isabel Allende

Symbolism of Asparagus in Visual Art

Asparagus has long held the stigma of being associated with erotic overtones.

Whether it is for its medicinal purposes, its aphrodisiac status or its phallic resemblance to sexual organs, asparagus has been coupled with visual art mediums for centuries.  

Old beliefs and myths, that still exist today, will have you believe that asparagus has the ability to increase and stimulate feelings of love and passion. Nicholas Culpepper, a 17^th Century herbalist agreed and wrote that asparagus “stirs up lust in man and woman”. Of course let’s not discount the French word for asparagus which is asperge; asperge is a slang word for penis! Get the phallic resemblance now?

Considered one of the healthiest of vegetables, asparagus is high in fibre and potassium and rich in vitamin E. All these nutrients aid to boost histamine production. So why is this important? Increased histamine production is necessary to increase the ability for both men and women to reach orgasm.

So why is asparagus widely used in visual art forms then?

Dutch 17^th Century Still Life paintings were found to commonly use asparagus. Highly valued at this time as a luxury item, asparagus represented and symbolized among other things prosperity.

In August 2012 Newsweek published a feature on "101 Best Places to Eat in the World" as its cover story. The suggestive image is of two pieces of asparagus dangling provocatively over the open red lips of female model. Whilst the image raised much discussion, not only for the fact that the image had been previously used several years before by Newsweek, the image raised questions again of sexism against females.

Needless to say then, asparagus is considered an all round love food, be its powers of erotic stimulation or its general symbolic representation.

The Perfumed Garden, a 15^th Century Arabic sex manual and work of erotic literature, translated by Sir Richard Burton, presents the following analogy to finish off with:

"He who boils asparagus, and then fries them in fat, and then pours upon them the yolks of eggs with pounded condiments, and eats every day of this dish, will grow very strong for coitus, and find in it a stimulant for his amorous desires".

Does Chocolate & Food Porn go Hand in Hand?

Sheer Ecstasy…Stirred Slowly like an argiouous lover…Slithers…Melting…Slathered and Dipped…Succulent…Blissfully Cascades over a promiscuous mix of sweet succulent, heavenly cream…a sweet seduction that won’t take no for an answer!

These words as mentioned in the above visual presentation highlight the fantasies created and facilitated by food. The familiar sight of chocolate in visual art is an indication of its position as one of the most recognizable food items in food porn.  

Does chocolate create sexual desire just like looking at porn?

Chocolate represents love and happiness. It never disappoints! Chocolate is portrayed as having the power to reward, supplement and satisfy, especially female desires. Visually, chocolate creates an anticipation of pleasure.

Studies of chocolate have found it to contain phenylethylamine and serotonin, which are both “feel good” chemicals. These chemicals are released by our brains when we are happy or feeling amorous. So the suggestion is that because you have eaten chocolate previously, when you see it in these visual images, similar feelings occur…the same pleasurable heightened buzz.

In the marketing and advertising world, chocolate is quite often linked to sexual pleasure and presented as an alternative to love and sex, again especially to females. Chocolate images continue to portray having the ability to satisfy sexual desires. Any taboo issues associated with the consumption of chocolate are therefore lost in the representation of sexual desire and enhanced by self-indulgent desires.

There is no doubt that chocolate is a strong advocate for food porn which enhances passion and celebrates the joy of life.

“Twill make Old women Young and Fresh; Create New Motions of the Flesh, and cause them to long for you know what, if they but taste of chocolate.”  James Wadsworth

Food Porn as an Aphrodisiac

Is food sexy? Will images of food lead to feelings of passion? Is our obsession with food going too far to suggest that food images could be considered an aphrodisiac?

No matter how confusing and complicated the connection, food has been used as a metaphor for pleasure for years. 

In his 1961 compilation The Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, Harry Wedeck described aphrodisiacs as “stimuli of love, involving visual images, olfactory and tactile experiences and physiological operations related to food, drink and drugs inducing arousal.”

The understanding then that an aphrodisiac has the ability to increase blood flow in the body, creating excitement in the brain serves to mimic the same activity when one is viewing visually interesting food in art. Artists over time have tapped into this by imputing well known aphrodisiacs in their artworks.

Just to name a few, let’s start with Oysters, the most well-known of aphrodisiacs, and Asparagus. Both known for invoking feelings of lust and improving ones sex life were both commonly used in 17^th Century Dutch Still Life paintings and are also seen today in many visual art-forms.

Chocolate speaks for itself - the symbol of love, it makes you feel good! Bananas, by their shape alone serve to have a connection and is said to improve male libido.

Our interpretations can therefore shed light on aphrodisiacs use in art forms as Isabel Allende in her book Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses alluded quite clearly that “whether some aphrodisiacs function through analogy, like the vulva-shaped oyster or the phallic asparagus, others by association, because they remind us of something erotic”.

But at the end of the day, as Dr. Ruth Westheimer famously quipped, “The most important sex organ lies between the ears.” It all starts in the mind!

Restaurants Using Social Media to Tap into Food Porn

Food Porn is everywhere!

The emergence and popularity of the current foodie culture has been further multiplied by the growth of the internet. Food Porn has been able to grow due to the many different modes of social sharing sites.

Food images are the fastest growing categories on websites like Instagram, Flickr and Foursquare.

Photo sharing through these social mediums has become a way for food lovers to share their food happy snaps while dining. For restaurants, this has become a forum for free and instant marketing of their venues, a great tool to take advantage of food porn.

So why do people feel compelled to take pictures of their food in restaurants?

It’s a sign of the food culture. Look where I’m eating…social status, recognition or maybe just the recording of special moments in life. The images are a reflection of who you are. It’s an obsession!

Only last week I visited OX Eatery, a restaurant at the new East Hotel in Canberra. On the front page of the menu, diners are encouraged to “TAKE A PICTURE OF YOUR VISIT TO OX EATERY WITH INSTAGRAM AND POST IT ON TWITTER”.

A restaurant in New York has grasped the trend by creating their very own ‘Instagram Menu’. Diners at Comodo in SoHo are asked to upload their food photos with the hashtag #comodomenu, helping to create an entire menu of dishes on offer. Customers can then easily glance virtually at the restaurant’s food at their leisure.

Play Comodo's video below which requests diners to submit their food porn to Instagram: