The Photographer's Cookbook

In the 1970s, the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, sent a questionnaire to photographers in its collection asking them to contribute a recipe alongside a self-portrait. The results were archived and largely forgotten until curator Lisa Hostetler rediscovered them and compiled them into this book. The contributors include Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, Arnold Newman, Duane Michals, Jerry Uelsmann, and dozens of other figures central to twentieth-century photography, each represented by a self-portrait and a recipe that ranges from the practical to the whimsical to the barely edible.

The book works on two levels: as a document of a specific moment in American photography culture and as an index of personality, since what photographers choose to cook and how they write about it turns out to be unexpectedly revealing. Hostetler's introduction places the project in the context of the Eastman House's collecting history. Designed by Katy Homans.