viscid |visid| adjective
glutinous; sticky : the viscid mucus lining of the intestine.

Photographing food is the way I relate to my audience emotionally. There are foods people love; something comforting and reminiscent of the past. There are also foods that people hate; food that disgusts and evokes bad associations. We as living beings trust food to nourish, comfort, and entertain. By photographing the subject manipulated, desecrated, or dissected, the relationship is turned on it’s head. Something delicious becomes questionable, even unrecognizable. Despite the destruction, beauty is still attained, as texture, color and light become the focus and the most discernible aspects of the subject. In this series I photograph cheap processed desserts as if they were assaulted and left to rot. The killer fetishizes the food objects, loves them, but cannot shake his or her shame. The desserts are left unfinished.

In this health conscious society, desserts are scrutinized. A hand crafted butter cream cake made by a local baker is more highly esteemed than a starchy hockey puck of a cake with a silly name made by a machine. The human hand is desired. Twinkies represent obesity; being duped as a child into eating badly, which carries onto adulthood. It represents an America where heritage is lost in translation as it is outsourced by the most efficient way to make a snack. But Twinkies are still eaten and loved, albeit as a guilty pleasure.

Though the destruction is apparent, the cakes remain appealing. I accentuate the glutinosity, the vibrant colors, and the grease. The staged landscape in which they are photographed continues the fantasy. The lighting is unrealistic, the plant life is fake. Regardless of what the desserts are constituted of, and the stigma attached to those ingredients, they make a beautiful object that seduces.