Alfred Gescheidt is a professional photographer born in Queens, New York on December 19, 1926. He won a scholarship to the Art Students’ League and studied with Will Barnet and Harry Sternberg. He served briefly in the Navy during World War II, then went to the University of New Mexico and studied with Raymond Johnson. He decided to become a photographer and transferred to the Los Angeles Art Center School and here studied with George Hoyningen-Huene. In the 1950s he documented life on city streets and beaches of America. (Escape Into Life: Alfred Geischeidt)

Previously on Skandalon

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service ― The Federal Duck Stamp Program: “Retrievers Save Game” by Maynard Reece, 1959-60

Black and white wash and tempera drawing of a Labrador retriever carrying a Mallard by Maynard Reece, the first artist to win the competition three times.

Inscription: Front - “U.S. Department of the Interior. Void after June 30, 1960. Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp. $3. Retrievers Save Game.” Back - “Duck Stamps dollars buy wetlands to perpetuate waterfowl. It is unlawful to hunt waterfowl unless you sign your name in ink on the face of this stamp.” (more)

Domic Davies is responsible for the photographies displayed in the famous Big Fat Cookbook:

In this enormous, beautiful book, we hear the full story of the meteoric rise of Heston Blumenthal and The Fat Duck, birthplace of snail porridge and bacon-and-egg ice cream, and encounter the passion, perfection and weird science behind the man and the restaurant.

Heston Blumenthal is widely acknowledged to be a genius, and The Fat Duck has twice been voted the Best Restaurant in the World by a peer group of top chefs. But he is entirely self-taught, and the story of his restaurant has broken every rule in the book. His success has been borne out of his pure obsession, endless invention and a childish curiosity into how things work – whether it’s how smell affects taste, what different flavours mean to us on a biological level, or how temperature is distributed in the centre of a soufflé. (from the editor’s website)

See more excerpt from the book over at Daily Icon. Visit The Fat Duck official website (before being a book, it’s a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the UK). Learn more about chef Heston Blumenthal on Wikipedia. If you can’t afford the full version of this book (it sells at around 150$ dollars on Amazon) don’t worry : there’s a lowered-price edition of it, selling at around 30$:

The cookbook hailed by the Los Angeles Times as a “showstopper” and by Jeffrey Steingarten of Vogue as “the most glorious spectacle of the season…like no other book I have seen in the past twenty years” is now available in a reduced-price edition. With a reduced trim size but an identical interior, this lavishly illustrated, stunningly designed, and gorgeously photographed masterpiece takes you inside the head of maverick restaurateur Heston Blumenthal. Separated into three sections (History; Recipes; Science), the book chronicles Blumenthal’s improbable rise to fame and, for the first time, offers a mouth-watering and eye-popping selection of recipes from his award-winning restaurant. He also explains the science behind his culinary masterpieces, the technology and implements that make his alchemical dishes come to life. Designed by acclaimed artist Dave McKean—and filled with photographs by Dominic Davies—this artfully rendered celebration of one of the world’s most innovative and renowned chefs is a foodie’s dream. (Amazon)

In any case, be sure to take a look at the Big Fat Undertaking blog: someone actually attempting to do more with this book than looking at the picture.

In Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young, and Maxime Bilet—scientists, inventors, and accomplished cooks in their own right—have created a six-volume 2,400-page set that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that ranges from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors—and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab—have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. It is a work destined to reinvent cooking. (About)

Download a 20 pages preview of the book (PDF). Learn more about the authors (Myhrvold was the first chief technology officer at Microsoft : check his wikipedia page). The 6 volumes are all sold together. They can be pre-ordered on Amazon for a meer 500$

“Infographic narrative poster that explores Chicago’s historical and cultural relationship with the production and consumption of meat. Project was created for the Select Media Festival 7 Infoporn exhibit.”

First spotted via Information About Information.

Meatpaper

“Meatpaper is a print magazine of art and ideas about meat. We like metaphors more than marinating tips. We are your journal of meat culture.

At once divisive and universal, delicious and disturbing, funny and dead-serious, meat polarizes us unlike any other food. Us, we’re ambidextrous here at Meatpaper — no agenda except to gnaw on the ideas, artistic excursions and bone-deep emotions the subject inspires. We invite you to dig in with us.” (more)

Retro-Dad photostream on Flickr : “Meat… You’re right liking it”

About Mark Ryden :

“Mark Ryden came to preeminence in the 1990’s during a time when many artists, critics and collectors were quietly championing a return to the art of painting. With his masterful technique and disquieting content, Ryden quickly became one of the leaders of this movement on the West Coast.

Upon first glance Ryden’s work seems to mirror the Surrealists’ fascination with the subconscious and collective memories. However, Ryden transcends the initial Surrealists’ strategies by consciously choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation. His dewy vixens, cuddly plush pets, alchemical symbols, religious emblems, primordial landscapes and slabs of meat challenge his audience not necessarily with their own oddity but with the introduction of their soothing cultural familiarity into unsettling circumstances. (more)

Artist Statement - “The Meat Show” - October 1998 :

“I believe to get ideas you have to nourish the spirit. I stuff myself full of the things I like: pictures of bugs, paintings by Bouguereau and David, books about Pheneous T. Barnum, films by Ray Harryhausen, old photographs of strange people, children’s books about space and science, medical illustrations, music by Frank Sinatra and Debussy, magazines, T.V., Jung and Freud, Ren and Stimpy, Joseph Campbell and Nostradamus, Ken and Barbie, Alchemy, Freemasonary, Buddhism. At night my head is so full of ideas I can’t sleep. I mix it all together and create my own doctrine of life and the universe.” (more)

Previously on Skandalon: meat

The New Yorker, December 14th, 2009, p. 48. Illustration by Michael Shaw.

“My career as a magazine cartoonist began in 1966, at the age of eight when I swiped a copy of the book Thurber & Company from my brother,” says Michael Shaw. “I am now a copywriter for Lands’ End, which is a fine and noble profession. Unfortunately the doodle bug has never left me. Sometime in early 1998 I decided that before the end of this century, I would sell a cartoon to The New Yorker or implode in the attempt.” (more here)

”The River Cottage Meat Book covers everything you need to know about choosing the very best raw materials, and understanding the different cuts and the cooking techniques associated with each of them. With foolproof recipes for 150 meat classics from both Britain and around the world, The River Cottage Meat Book is your first stop wheter you are looking for inspiration or technical guidance on any aspect of meat cookery.” Learn more about River Cottage and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Previously on Skandalon.

About David Sykes: “David Sykes is a professional still life photographer mainly working with advertising, design and editorial clients. He is based in London.”

Paul Lukas explains:

“Figure 7 doesn’t really form part a graphic progression, but I included it because it’s one of the very few charts I’ve seen that depicts the steer’s skeleton. And to reference the issue I raised earlier, you can see that T-Bone steaks are section 16 on the chart, which corresponds to the animal’s back, just below the ribcage. So, yes, the bone in a T-bone is a vertebrate.”

This picture belongs to Paul Lukas’ presentation about “A Brief History of Butchery Charts” (PDF) given as part of the School Of Visual Arts Design Criticism reading series on May 29, 2008 (more about SVA D-Crit: PDF). All figures referenced in this presentation can be found over at Michael Surtees photostream on Flickr.

About Paul Lukas:

“Paul Lukas is a storyteller whose work has appeared in The New York Times, GQ, Fortune, Gourmet, ESPN The Magazine, Spin, and The Financial Times, among many other publications. He currently works as a columnist for ESPN.com, where he writes “Uni Watch,” the nation’s foremost (okay, only) sports column devoted to uniform design. He also maintains a daily Uni Watch blog and performs as one half of the lecture/slideshow act the Forewords.” (read more)