Pork and chipotle sliders
(Read article summary)Pork sliders are quick to make and can be served as an appetizer or in pairs to make up a meal.
Jon Feinstein’s 2008 series titled Fast Food features an assortment of sandwiches and sides purchased from chain restaurants. Stripping each foodstuff from a contextualizing background, the food floats against a stark black void – each detail meticulously recorded via the flatbed scanner. For Feinstein, the use of the scanner in place of a camera is twofold; it allows him to render the image in a “rigid, specific and typological manner” and it mirrors the “removal of the hand in food preparation.”[1]
Represented sans the gloss of the company branding, the food is presented un-apologetically to the viewer, pressed against an invisible boundary. Each image is paired with a number followed by "grams" to highlight the amount of fat in each meal, as demonstrated in the photograph 16 grams, conceded by the artist to be a Burger King cheeseburger. According to Feinstein, “These photographs investigate the love/hate relationship that many Americans have with fast food, and like many other aspects of popular culture, its ability to be simultaneously seductive and repulsive.”[2]
Through this series, Feinstein highlights his interest in our “attraction to things that we know are ‘bad’ for us.”[3] In his book, "Fast Food Nation," Eric Schlosser argues that at this point in history, we are conditioned from childhood, through branding and advertising, to seek out fast food. Entire marketing strategies were developed to establish life-long consumer loyalty from childhood. It is through these associations that as educated adults, aware of the health concerns associated with the consumption of fast food, we continue to eat it. Schlosser continues by reasoning that aroma and memory are linked and that a scent has the ability to “evoke a long-forgotten-memory”, with childhood foods leaving “an indelible mark”[4] causing adults to consume them without exactly knowing why.
