Grocery Store
Cyanotype print series, 2021
Grocery Store is a photographic series that traces everyday food items back to their raw, unprocessed origins. Collaborating with photographer Joe Lingeman, I documented these common ingredients in their pre-commercial state, then printed them using cyanotype and toning echniques. Each image slows down the viewer’s recognition of the familiar, inviting a second look at the often invisible systems of labor, agriculture, and packaging that shape daily consumption.
Cyanotype is a 19th-century alternative photography process associated with both scientific documentation and early botanical studies. The technique involves exposing coated paper to UV light and washing it in water, a slow and tactile process that mirrors the agricultural rhythms our food system typically obscures. The images are a nod to blueprints, revealing these foods as structural elements of life while also highlighting their transformation from organisms to objects, from nature to products.
By pairing a utilitarian subject with a historical art process, Grocery Store asks what it means to truly see what we consume, and how we might reclaim attention, slowness, and intimacy within systems designed for speed, convenience, and erasure.