Interview with Thomas Schauer By Georgette Farkas
This is an interview which is part of a series of photographers who specialize in food and chefs , created especially for Musee Magazine . The interviews will be conducted by Georgette Farkas , whose restaurant , Rotisserie Georgette , will open at the end of the month .
Is it safe to assume you were a photographer before you became known for your food photography ?
My dad was always passionate about cooking . On weekends we threw mom out of the kitchen . We picked strawberries in the summer and brought home hams from my uncle ’ s farm . I ’ m from South of Gratz in Styrea ( Austria ), home of pumpkin seed oil . My first big food photography project was David Bouley ’ s cookbook , “ East of Paris .” I met him through a friend when he was cooking a dinner in the Austrian Alps . He first hired me to shoot the regional pieces in Austria . That was 1999 . Before that my food work had been strictly local . I love to communicate through food . Even when you don ’ t speak the language in a foreign country , you can sit down to a meal with people and communicate through the food . In South Korea , I really had to do that . I was working there with Chef Sohyi Kim . I ’ ll be shooting her second book this fall . She ’ s a chef who moved to Korea as a child and now has four restaurants there . This kind of work takes me out of my comfort zone and makes everything I do back home better .
You have a highly recognizable style and approach . How would you best describe that and what are you proudest of in your work ? What are your priorities ?
Natural , no fake food . The energy has to come through the food . That comes a lot from the chefs I work with . I love that they perfectly season the food for photos , even though no one ’ s going to eat it . Again , I shoot real food . Jose Andres says , “ If it tastes good , it will look good .” We shot “ Made in Spain ” together . When you have a team of great cooks in a busy kitchen all coming together to compose a dish , you feel their energy in the food , and it then it comes out in the photo .
You work with very accomplished chefs , so shooting their food is a collaboration ? Tell me about that . Do the chefs you work with have a strong vision when it comes to images of their work ? Are they open to your ideas ?
Even the greatest chefs want to have others around with a vision and their own ideas . They want other ’ s creative input . They all ask me how I would suggest plating the dish for the photo . Often the way the dish first comes out of the kitchen isn ’ t how we end up shooting it . A typical plating may not have the balance we need for a photo . For example a pastry may have very interesting layers that just don ’ t show in a photo . We have to work to bring them out . They have to be much more precise than if just for a menu . Sometimes we realize we should shoot a step in the process of making a dish , as opposed to the finished dish . We did this with Jose Andres and his salt baked red snapper . With some chefs we do both a process shot and a finished shot , as with Daniela ’ s new book , “ My French Cuisine ”. Shooting the table side carving of the “ canard au sang ” was quite a production , theater really .
Name a couple of the chefs you ’ ve most loved working with - for the quality of the collaboration , or what you ’ ve learned from them ?
Daniel Boulud , Jose Andres , David Bouley , Sohyia Kim , Dan Barber , Dominique Ansel , Eckart Witzigman , Mario Lohninger . They are artists , a little different , crazy - but that ’ s good , all creative with very high standards . Sometimes before a project someone warns me , “ Oh that chef is very complicated .” But I ’ ve never had a problem with that . The high standards are what we share . They hire me to put their vision on the page . So I make an effort to get to know them . So the way we work together and the result is different for each one .
What ’ s most challenging about shooting food , as compared to other still life objects ?
It takes speed . You sometimes have to capture a moment , before a sauce runs , an ice cream melts , before some let-