The Geometry of Sustenance

I have always been suspicious of the way we try to dress up the mundane. We take the things that keep us alive—the simple, messy, necessary things—and we try to turn them into something decorative, something that belongs in a gallery rather than a kitchen. My first instinct was to roll my eyes at the effort. It felt like an attempt to force order onto something that is inherently fleeting, a way of pretending that our daily consumption is a grand design rather than a biological necessity. I wanted to find it pretentious. I wanted to argue that a piece of fruit is just a piece of fruit, and that trying to make it look like a stained-glass window is a distraction from the act of eating. But then, I stopped looking for the artifice and started looking at the light. There is a quiet, stubborn dignity in the way these things hold their shape, a reminder that even the most common parts of our survival have a structure we rarely bother to notice. What happens when we stop seeing the utility and start seeing the architecture of the things that keep us going?

Catherine Ferraz has taken this beautiful image titled Stocking up on Some Vitamins. She has managed to turn the simple act of preparation into something that demands a second look. Does this change the way you see the contents of your own bowl?