Bautier Books

The Photographer's Cookbook

It was 1977, and Deborah Barsel, assistant registrar at the George Eastman Museum, struck upon the idea of compiling a book of photographer's recipes. She was bored in her job and wanted to take on a fun extracurricular project.

She placed a notice in the museum's magazine requesting submissions of photographers' favourite recipes and food-related photographs. She also wrote letters to photographers inviting them to participate in the project, and to her surprise, many of them wrote back. A couple of years later, she had over 120 responses and began organizing them for publication. Unfortunately, Barsel left the museum to enrol in graduate school before the book was complete, and her planned cookbook never came to fruition.

Now, forty years later, this extensive and distinctive archive of untouched recipes and photographs are published in The Photographer’s Cookbook for the first time. The book provides a time capsule of the photography community in the 1970s.

• June 2016
  Hardcover, 160p. 170 x 220mm
  Co-published by Aperture & Eastman Museum
  Essay by Lisa Hostelter