Friday, April 30, 2021

Prandial portraits

Suffice to say that the winners of the various categories in the Food Photographer of the Year competition have gone a bit further than simply Instagramming their lunch. Indeed, some of them chose to focus not on finished dishes but on food purchase, production and (in the case of the "exquisite image" that scooped Li Huaifeng the overall prize) preparation.

Most of the images in the BBC's gallery celebrate the joy of food and its social and cultural functions, but the final one - Md. Mahabub Hossain Khan's picture of a young Bangladeshi child drinking the dregs from a bottle found through foraging in a rubbish tip - is a chastening reminder that many millions of people don't enjoy the luxury of being able to take pleasure in what they consume and are simply desperate for sustenance in any form.

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