Carl Warner was born in Liverpool, England in 1963.
At seven years of he Moved to Kent with his parents and spent hours drawing and
creating worlds from his imagination, that were inspired by the posters on his
walls.
Carl started his career by attending to Maidstone
College of Art with the intention of becoming an illustrator as he was a
talented drawer, but he quickly learned that his ideas
and creativity were better suited to photography. After a year he moved
to the London College of Printing in 1982 to do a three year degree course in
photography, film and television.
He became a successful advertising photographer
from the mid to late 80′s through to the mid nineties he
eventually found that his work was becoming less in demand as well as
unfulfilling creatively. He wanted to do something new and different to do with
his talent that would rekindle his interest in photography and add life to his
business. Inspiration seemed difficult to find, but one day he was looking
around a food market he found some wonderful "portabello mushrooms"
which he thought "looked like some kind of tree from an alien world".
So he took them back to his studio with other ingredients such as rice seeds
and beans to try and create a miniature scene on a table top.
The Mushroom Savanna was his first “Foodscape” and
over the next ten years he continued to develop a body of work making
landscapes out of food which attracted the advertising industry who
commissioned him for advertising campaigns for various food based products and
brands.
"The ‘Foodscapes’ are created in Carl’s London studio. They are built on top of a large purpose built triangular table top. The scenes are photographed in layers from foreground to background and sky as this process is time consuming and the food quickly wilts under the lights. Each element is then put together in post production to achieve the final image". Carl says: “ Although I’m very hands on with my work, I do use model makers and food stylists to help me create the sets. I tend to start with a drawing which I sketch out in order to get the composition worked out, this acts as a blue print for the team to work to.”
Once he has decided on scene and has been drawn up and approved, Carl then decides what each part of the scene will be made from, he works with a food stylist who helps to determine the best ingredients to work with in order to achieve his aims. Carl says: “I tend to draw a very conventional landscape using classic compositional techniques as I need to fool the viewer into thinking it is a real scene at first glance, it is the realisation that the scene is in fact made of food that brings a smile that brings a smile to the viewer, and for me that’s the best part”
“I’ve always enjoyed the discipline of working in the studio, and the spontaneity of working outdoors in natural light, as you never know what you’re going to get. With my ‘Foodscapes’ I can now put together the knowledge of natural light with the control of recreating it in the studio in order to bring out the colours and textures as well as the beauty of a scene”These images can take up to two or three days to build and photograph and then a couple of days retouching and fine tuning the images to blend all the elements together. Carl spends a great deal of time planning each image before shooting in order to choose the best ingredients to replicate larger scale shapes and forms within nature. However, he is careful to point out that finding the right shaped broccoli to use as a tree is an all important task. carl says: “Although there is a fair amount of waste, there is a lot of food left over which is always shared out with the team, though most of the food used in the sets have either been super glued or pinned and none of this makes for good eating!”
post by Jackie
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