Bad Food Gone Worse

1 Oct 2007 Category: Features, Photography, Worldwide

Bad Food Gone Worse

Aged food photography in a shop window display: Have a look at these organic objects and their vivid colours! Interesting, but it doesn't exactly look yummy - perceive it as art then... From "Bad Food Gone Worse". © KesselsKramer

While waiting at a snack bar and looking at the food displays, Dutch photographer Rene Nuijens and art director Ewoudt Boonstra of publisher KesselsKramer had the idea of collecting the faded food pics for a nice little compendium called Bad Food Gone Worse – not to show strange food tastes but the inevitable fate of all mundane things: to fade away and vanish before our eyes. Bad Food Gone Worse contains the contemporary fast food versions of a vanitas still life. PingMag presents not, um, exactly mouth-watering objects, but surealistic works of food art.

Written by Verena

Faded beauties and their delicate zigzag outlines, lovely! Could have been once salami rolls on leafs… From “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

First, how did it all start with the collection?

Ewoudt: I got the idea while I was waiting for my order of French fries, noticing I was surrounded by pictures of green fries and yellow burgers. The duality of these images struck me: Despite them being clearly outdated they hadn’t lost their function. Rene is a photographer and director with a similar passion for duality so he was the first one that popped into my mind.

Rene: I liked the idea so much that I obsessively started looking for these shots!

An ice-cream sundae deconstructed by time! From “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

Where did you two collect all those pictures: Besides spotting those in shop displays, was it maybe your personal flea market collection…?

Rene: None of the photos are from flea markets - or from the Internet. All shots were taken on location in restaurants, snackbars and all sorts of places where people sell food and display food pictures. We travel quite a lot for our work and, for nearly two years, everywhere we went in Europe we had a built-in sensor that spotted these kind of shots. We have been searching the streets for those shots that where taking in Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Belgium, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy…

Ewoudt: …and Turkey.

The left pic bears a kind of solid tackiness, whereas the one on the right seems to be more of a hairy matter. Spread from “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

What was the weirdest way you got hold of an image – any anecdotes?

Rene: I have been kicked out of several places. But on the other side of the spectrum, people took out their menu cards to show me the photos in them. By the way, the grill bar opposite the place where the book launch took place changed its photographs after seeing its shots in the book.

Ewoudt: For me, the funniest thing was that the printer of the book said that he couldn’t print it. We asked Why? Is there a technical problem? And he said No. I get sick every time I look at it.

Softened food image as modern vanitas still life… From “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

May I call it a certain aesthetics of morbidity, or how would you better describe this special kind of food art?

Rene: Both… Some are very beautiful, as if they were painted. Others are pretty disgusting, I have to admit.

Ewoudt: The visual world is a very fast world: Magazines come out once a week or once a month; posters get replaced weekly; billboards get replaced twice a month; newspapers are put out daily. There is no time for decay as everything has to look brand new and fresh. Snack food photography is one of the few places in the visual world where time gets a grip on images. I think we should embrace that and see the beauty in it.


The colours in homemade printouts tend to fade the quickest. From “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

See the strange beauty in it! From “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

I guess the images question our definition of beauty in a nicely ironic way. It demonstrates that beauty, in this case mouth-watering dishes, is firstly something in our imagination – and the pictures just remind you of that. What do you think?

Rene: First, it’s important that people see what kind of food is sold and it helps you to make a decision. But in the end it doesn’t matter how the pictures look. If people are hungry… they will eat!

Ewoudt: Exactly! The irony is that it doesn’t matter what the pictures look like. That says something about the way we work with images – once they start to fade, they become obsolete. Another ironic aspect is that modern technology doesn’t help, but makes things worse: People start taking pictures of their dishes themselves and print them on their own printer – a lot of Chinese restaurants do this for some reason– and those pictures will fade away within days.

Ugh! Some objects of uncertain origin… but a nice brown tone! From “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

I really like the way the colours fade in some pictures - a watery spectrum, transforming the objects into something else entirely. Did that draw you to these as professional photographer?

Rene: Some shots even reminded me when I was experimenting in art school, trying to burn negatives, putting sand on them, burying them or making double exposures. The fading away was definitely the beauty of the pictures, but we were also really surprised how nobody cared how the pictures looked. Both owners and the diners!

Ewoudt: Most of the time I’m more interested in imperfection than perfection.

Variations on Chinese dishes… From “Bad Food Gone Worse”. © KesselsKramer

So, you ate in some or all of those restaurants?

Rene: Oh yes! Sometimes I thought it would be better if I ordered first before asking the owner to take the photographs.

Ewoudt: No! The images are meant to be superfluous. Once I started really looking at them I became too disgusted.


The cover logo of the “Bad Food Gone Worse” collection. © KesselsKramer

Your book intro says Beauty, after all, is in the eye of the beholder who, sooner or later, will be hungry. Lovely variation! Personally, what does your favourite food look like?

Rene: I like the Mediterranean kitchen and home stewed food. As simple and honest as possible…

Ewoudt: My favourite food is anything vegetarian and organic, even burgers and French fries.

Oh! You would absolutely love the plastic food replicas in the window displays of Japanese restaurants over here. However, their colours never fade away… Thank you, Rene Nuijens and Ewoudt Boonstra for sharing your visual Bad Food Gone Worse delicacies with us today!

72 Comments

  1. That’s a big Yuckkk!

    Posted by: JP Valentik on October 1st, 2007 at 11:05 pm

  2. Two words. MOSs burger.

    Posted by: Cyberpukish on October 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 am

  3. thats the best way to lose weight

    Posted by: kate on October 2nd, 2007 at 12:51 am

  4. food photography is not easy to shot. trying making the food glaze and look appealing takes food makeup artist.

    Posted by: Anonymous on October 2nd, 2007 at 8:20 am

  5. I love the colors of this pic http://images.pingmag.jp/images/article/food09.jpg

    Posted by: Akai on October 2nd, 2007 at 8:40 am

  6. Cool. Love the way these old shots fade away and take all of the flavour with them :-) The amount of trickery that goes into food photography is crazy. I worked with a top food photographer in London years ago and we used to stuff roast chicken with newspaper to get the nice shape, use latex rubber instead of milk and we would cook three of everything: one to set up the shot, one for the real shot and one in case something got dropped or ruined.

    Posted by: Alfie on October 2nd, 2007 at 6:16 pm

  7. [...] PingMag » Bad Food Gone Worse ‘Snack food photography is one of the few places in the visual world where time gets a grip on images. I think we should embrace that and see the beauty in it.’ (tags: snackfood fastfood photos books) daily links | October 2 at 9:25 am | RSS « Island rugby [...]

    Posted by: Heraclitean Fire — Links on October 2nd, 2007 at 6:25 pm

  8. I love it!!..i feel sure I could find some fine examples in the UK too…..

    Posted by: sally vincent on October 3rd, 2007 at 12:10 am

  9. I love it! No food stylists around these images. Refreshing in a yukky sort of way and just goes to show how difficult good food photography is. Now I’ll be on the lookout for some horrors too!!

    Posted by: sally vincent on October 3rd, 2007 at 12:16 am

  10. wonderful photography!! excellent. the dishes look exactly like the photo’s above the counter. very good!

    Posted by: joppe on October 3rd, 2007 at 1:26 am

  11. What the heck!

    Posted by: Okinawa on October 3rd, 2007 at 5:30 am

  12. me so hungry, me me so hungry.
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  13. [...] to grace restaurant menus and walls, as documented in the photography book, Bad Food Gone Worse. PingMag interviewed the book’s authors, photographer Rene Nuijens and art director Ewoudt Boonstra of publisher KesselKramer, about the [...]

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  16. it is so grose

    Posted by: saske on April 19th, 2008 at 9:19 pm

  17. I have been collecting those for quite some time too:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/tupwanders/sets/72157603042127931/

    Posted by: Tuppus on June 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 am

  18. Interesting stuff. I wrote a section in my project entitled “Horror” which was similar, tho arts-oriented. You mighty enjoy http://www.foodinthearts.blogspot.com

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