Flow of Perspectives: Food in the Books of Nobuyoshi Araki and Martin Parr

The text was originally written for The Blueprint in 2016

What could Nobuyoshi Araki and Martin Parr possibly have in common? One crafts sensual, intensely personal images that turn private emotion into visual form; the other documents the banal, transforming it into a bright, kitschy archive of contemporary society.

Yet some books create an unexpected point of intersection in their legacies. In The Banquet (Araki), The British Food (Parr) and Real Food (Parr), both artists turn their cameras toward the everyday — but they see it utterly differently. Even when their technical choices are identical — color film, a ring flash, a macro lens — the worlds they construct continue to unfold in opposite directions.

left: The Banquet by Nobuyoshi Araki; right: The British Food by Martin Parr

Parr first experimented with a ring flash in the early 1990s, during his black-and-white period while working on the series *Bad Weather. Later, in the 1992 book [Signs of the Times](https://huxleyparlour.com/exhibitions/signs-of-the-times/)*, he began using close-ups. However, it was the combination of a macro lens with a ring flash that became Parr’s signature style by the mid-decade, following his encounter with Araki’s photobook.

Araki’s book The Banquet (Shokuji) was published in 1993. It is dedicated to the photographer’s wife, Yoko, who had died of cancer. The book is divided into two parts: colour commercial photographs of food taken during Araki’s work at an advertising agency, and black-and-white images of the meals Nobuyoshi and Yoko shared after her diagnosis became known, just a month before her death. The two sections are separated by text: diary entries reflecting their final shared dinners.

The Banquet, Nobuyoshi Araki, reprint

The first section, celebrating pleasure and the triumph of life, is shot in colour using a macro lens and a ring flash. The second section, captured on black-and-white film under natural lighting, depicts the same subjects — the super-close-up food — but the tone shifts. These monochrome images are imbued with melancholy and a sense of detachment from physical reality, turning the focus inward.

The Banquet, Nobuyoshi Araki, reprint

In The Photobook: A History Volume I, Martin Parr notes the significance of Araki’s use of colour division in The Banquet, suggesting that the transition from colour to black-and-white reflects a move from realism to romanticism. Indeed, the monochrome photographs are softer, more abstract, and metaphorical: they describe Araki’s feelings rather than the objects themselves, which become barely discernible in the absence of colour.

The book offers an intensely personal and intimate perspective, capturing Araki’s tender feelings for his wife, his acknowledgment of her warmth and care as she prepared their meals, and his contemplation of death and the pain of loss. Sensuality, and even eroticism, are undeniably present, and the corporeal is palpable. Some commentators even note that in these images the food resembles internal organs, and Araki himself writes of one dish: “Biting into the grilled barracuda meat, which opened like legs spreading apart…” Yet beyond the corporeal, the photographs convey something more ephemeral: the quiet warmth that filled their evenings together over ordinary home-cooked dinners.

The Banquet, Nobuyoshi Araki, 1995

In Parr by Parr, Martin explains that his purchase of a macro lens in 1995, combined with the use of a flash and closer framing, was entirely deliberate: he had already seen how these techniques were employed in Lee Friedlander’s nude series, and then he encountered Araki’s The Banquet, which greatly intrigued him — all of this became a starting point for developing his signature style. The work felt exciting: “I once again felt I was on the verge of a discovery,” Parr recalls.

The first project Parr completed entirely in this manner was The British Food, realized in 1995 as both an exhibition at the Agnes b gallery in Paris and a photobook. In the series, he documented the diets of Britons across the country, exploring habits, culture, contemporary life, everyday choices, and people’s self-identities through food, thereby creating a portrait of an entire nation — in line with the idea that we are what we eat. The book is full of irony, composed of exaggeratedly vivid, ugly yet charming images.

The British Food, Martin Parr, 1995

In his extreme close-up photographs, the immediate subject disappears from the frame, and the story of a person is continued through objects. Looking at these images, it becomes clear that things — or food — can reveal a lot about people and the times they live in.

Parr continued photographing food in the same manner, but within different contexts and narratives. In 1999, he released the series Common Sense. “It was just the time the food renaissance was starting to kick off in the U.K. and yet British food had a terrible reputation. My job was to please the French, and find the worst examples of British food that I possibly could,” he told The Mold.

In 2016, Martin Parr published another book entirely devoted to food: The Real Food. This time, the variety of dishes was not limited to Britain and explored themes of globalization, consumer culture, contemporary life, people’s choices, habits, traditions.

The Real Food, Martin Parr, 2016

The introductory essay was written by chef Fergus Henderson, creator of St. John and an advocate of simple, down-to-earth cuisine. As Parr explains, in an era of food porn and pretentious imagery, he aimed to show what people actually eat: “We’re so used to seeing beautiful plates of posh food in magazines. Real food, is what we really eat.”

The book concludes with credits noting where the photographs were taken, but overall it reads like a large melting pot, making it difficult to pinpoint a specific country.

The Real Food, Martin Parr, 2016

Parr has employed the same approach in many other contexts, including commercial projects, such as the recently released Julie Bullard, an art project by Nadia Lee Cohen.

For Parr’s personal work, however, photographing food in close-up is more than an aesthetic choice — it is almost an anthropological research tool, a method for a photographer-observer studying society and the era he inhabits.

Like the early 19th-century photographers, explorers, and photographic missions participants, Parr “collects” contemporary reality, cataloguing it through photography in an attempt to understand society and find meaning in the world.

The Real Food, Martin Parr, 2016

Interestingly, much like an ethnographer, Martin Parr is also an avid collector of seemingly trivial objects. His extensive collection, which fills his home in Bristol, includes rolls of wallpaper produced decades ago, trays with photographic images, escort service flyers, and even a set of watches featuring Saddam Hussein.

Ultimately, while Araki and Parr employ the same photographic technique, they pursue opposite aims. But are there points of intersection in their work beyond mere technique?

Both employ straight photography and a narrow aperture, striving to capture reality as it is, without embellishment or alteration. This dedication to materiality and an honest engagement with life is also reflected in their choice of subject: what could be more down-to-earth than food?

left: The Banquet by Nobuyoshi Araki; right: The Real Food by Martin Parr

There is a certain provocation in both photographers’ images. In Araki’s case, a sense of discomfort may arise from the intimacy of his gaze and the corporeality of the objects. Parr, on the other hand, employs a gentle irony toward his subjects — we are all a little awkward and amusing in our natural obsession with food.

Both series prompt reflection on time, but in very different ways. In Araki’s work, time collapses; he captures fleeting, irretrievably lost moments tied to feelings and thoughts about mortality. Parr’s conception of time stretches outward: he meticulously collects the signs of an entire historical period and archives them in his series, thereby preserving them.

left: The British Food by Martin Parr; right: The Banquet by Nobuyoshi Araki

Araki and Parr are also united by a shared love of photobooks. Araki has published around 500, while Parr’s output is roughly ten times smaller, yet he has expressed his passion for the medium through his co-authorship with Gerry Badger of the three-volume The Photobook: A History.

Can Parr’s overt borrowing be read as a gesture of admiration for Araki’s work? By his own account, he was indeed impressed by Araki’s book. Yet it is likely more than that: Parr may have recognized something akin to his own practice and, perhaps through another artist’s work, discovered a fresh perspective on developing his own themes. In any case, it remains difficult to say whether the photobooks of Araki and Parr reveal more similarities or differences, yet the flow of approaches and perspectives is fascinating.