By the end of Friday's big AIGA/NY event at the New School, "Today's Specials: The Design of Food Presentation," the running joke was that edible animals are not safe in Victoria's presence. Maybe it's because she talked about a recent project involving live fish she'd bought in Chinatown. She had them in a tank for the photographer to shoot (very different from shooting fish in a barrel, thank you) but neglected to provide them with oxygen, and they started to go belly up. The session worked out just fine, so at least no images were harmed in the making of the photos.

She also told the story of the first time she worked with Irving Penn, who asked her to obtain a lobster and a hammer for a photograph to illustrate a Vogue article on Pearl Oyster Bar. Victoria explained that she got a lobster (a hearty 14-pounder) and, from a prop shop, a nicely worn vintage hammer. And then she showed us Mr. Penn's photo: a meaty red claw that had just been partially smashed by the hammer. A hammer wielded by Victoria, whose latex-glove-encased hands figured prominently in the picture.

 

But I think it was the tale of the turkey that drew the biggest gasps from the audience. Projected on the screen, a giant screen that shone brightly in the darkened auditorium, was a turkey neck, its mustard-yellow skin all bumpy, the stump a deep, pulpy red where it had been attached to the body. The creature was shot profile (also by Mr. Penn and also for Vogue—for a story on aging necks), and it wore a gimlet-eyed expression. Yes, its eye was open, and that was very much on purpose. Victoria explained that she'd bought the bird at a poultry store in Queens, telling the proprietor that she wanted it as a pet for her son. Then, as she once explained at this very blog, she took a car service to a slaughterhouse and had to make sure the turkey's eyes were open while the deed was done. (New York magazine's blog "Grub Street" mentioned the story too, though they got a couple of the facts wrong.) Well, you'd think that the crowd of photographers, students, and design folk had just been told that they could no longer wear black. "It was for the sake of art," Victoria said to the audience members, who only minutes later would be grasping their raffle tickets (issued by AIGA) in hopes of winning a beefy meal at BLT Burger. 

Mitch Feinberg with his still life of Mallomars, one of the finest cookies ever in the entire world.

Actually, by the time Victoria got to these stories, she'd already established herself as hilarious. She has a friendly and unassuming presence, and when she took the podium after a polished presentation by Phillip R. Tiongson of the design and technology firm Potion, I really had no idea what to expect. "I feel like the gum on the bottom of your shoe," she joked as he took his place at a table that had been set up stage right. (Phillip, Victoria, and their fellow speakers—the photographer Mitch Feinberg, with whom Victoria has worked many times, and the essayist Tacey A. Rosolowski—took part in a panel discussion afterward that was moderated by Born Round author Frank Bruni.) But she was terrific, and because she's self-effacing, her terrificness has extra impact. She told us that she began her career in L.A., where she's from, but the food-styling projects she worked on there were over-manipulated. "They wanted the food tortured into submission," she said. "Working in L.A. taught me exactly what I did not want to do." Pause. "And that's all L.A. was good for." (Huge laughs from the knowing New York audience.)

You never know what you'll see if you really look at food, Victoria told us. Here, a chorus of peppers.

Victoria was also passionate about her work and her belief in visual delight, showing us slides of Dutch still-life paintings, various commercial still-life interpretations and trends from the past 50 years, and even photos she'd taken with her iPhone, like one of some lime-green tomatoes lined up in a row on someone's window in Brooklyn.

 

From left: Frank Bruni, Tacey A. Rosolowski, Mitch Feinberg, Victoria (sorry, V, I had to show you at least once!), and Phillip R. Tiongson.

Victoria's an omnivorous consumer of beauty, basically, and sees it everywhere, in all its forms. Which is kind of a great way to go through life.

Just don't ask her to babysit your fish. —Kristina

(Kind thanks to Irina Lee of the blog Crit for letting us post her photos and to Stacey Panousopoulos and Andrea Codrington of AIGA/NY for putting us in touch with Irina!) 

This duo out of London "operates in the space between food and architecture," and their medium of choice is gelatin. That's jello. Wait till you see this installation. Reminds me of the time I made jello molds out of lucite jewelry for New York magazine, shot by Mitch Feinberg.

 

 

 

Here's the description by the AIGA, which is sponsoring the event at the New School: