El Paso Food Voices

3: Life through the Lens: Food, People, and Photography

In this podcast our guest is professor Dino Chiecchi, a life-long photographer journalist who now teaches in the Department of Communications at the University of Texas at El Paso. He speaks of the value the food has historically played in capturing peoples’ emotions in divers social, historical, cultural and economic realities. He this podcast, he talks about food in photography pertaining to food distribution, poverty, war, and famine. More specifically, he addresses several important factors that photographers should consider while photographing these social issues in first-world countries as well as third-world countries. He offers tips to listeners, which include caring about the subject matter and learning to show empathy without being too involved. He indicates the importance of separating the self from the subject matter since it could compromise the objective at hand. If photographs include people, they are the most important subject matter to consider because their body language not only reveals a great deal about them as an individual but as a part of the collective whole. He emphasizes the universal understanding that photography offers to a diverse audience regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc. However, he stresses the value of capturing the honest truth about life, both positive and negative, rather than concealing it through staging photographs. A has the ability to communicate across cultures, yet captions and cut-lines are crucial to know vital information such as the ‘who, what, where, when and why’ of a photograph. Have we captured your attention? Join us as we cultivate mindfulness while we capture moments and create memories.

 

2: Food in Art and Art in Food

On Monday October 28 2019 at 10:00 a.m., St. Petersburg Born and Internationally known artist Lyuba Titovets came in to be interviewed for the El Paso Food Voices Podcast. The interview began with an introduction of Lyuba, her profession and her background. Lyuba Titovets was born and raised in St. Petersburg Russia where she and her husband Alexander Titovets received training at the local university. After her introduction, Lyuba spoke about her development as an artist and how she developed her aesthetic and choice of composition, moving from the fantastical to the realm of reality and still lifes as she matured. Lyuba then spoke about the unique food/Russian inspirations in her artwork such as the White Nights Festival, an annual summer festival in Saint Petersburg celebrating the continual sunlight in the summer months. Lyuba then spoke of her move to El Paso and the local food influences that inspired her paintings, like the pomegranate tree, fig tree and grape vines in her backyard.

Lyuba spoke about the vivid colors as well as the universal and ancient connections she felt when looking at and painting these fruits, e.g. the pomegranate in the ancient Greek story of Hades and Persephone. Lyuba also spoke about her fascination with wine and wine bottles, as well as their universal and ancient connections. Lyuba then spoke about her use of food and fruit in not only constructing images for her own still life’s, but in teaching painting as well. She claimed that painting images, like fruit, in real life was much better than painting from a photograph because a photograph was static and did not convey the changes that happen overtime (light, decay etc.… ), thereby being less real and having less connection.

1: Dinner at the Aniszewskis

When he isn’t caring for others as an endocrinologist, Jarek Aniszewski is an avid home-cook and host who communicates care for others through food. In this episode on commensality, the act of eating together, Jarek discusses the ins and outs of his weekly food gatherings, filling us in on the menus and guests that make up his shared table, the collaborative dynamics of his family’s kitchen, and how his hospitality, influenced by both his Polish ethnicity and upbringing, has embraced El Pasoan culture.