I should have seen it coming. There was plenty of photographic evidence.

Back when I was studying photography in London and travelling to places to practice what I’d learnt, the film of choice for me was Kodachrome 64. It’s a film you have to expose carefully and then send away to be processed, and by send away I mean send to the United States. The wait was always stressful. I could afford maybe 20 rolls for 2 or 3 weeks away so every roll was precious. After a few weeks - sometimes longer - you would get your film back in little plastic boxes, it was better than Christmas. 

I made myself a lightbox out of a glass coffee table, a desk lamp and a sheet of tracing paper. Laying the slides out on the backlit tracing paper and looking at them through my Russian made fold out magnifying loop was one of my favourite things. Getting lost in the granular kaleidoscope of little moments. Centimetres away from the surface of the film, it’s unique, intimate and all encompassing. It makes you dream, and if you’re lucky - gasp. There’s nothing like seeing something you barely remember taking at the time come back to life - composed perfectly and bathed in beautiful light. It’s why you do it.

Recently I’ve been rehousing my archive, it’s a long process of checking the state of the emulsion and scanning anything interesting or anything that looks like it’s starting to deteriorate. 

Re-evaluating work that’s 30 years old can give you insights into how you have evolved as a photographer. This time round I started to see the relevance of the times I pointed my camera at food or food related moments, long before I thought of what sort of photographer I was going to be. When I tipped out a box of slides onto my DIY lightbox there was always a restaurant table, fisherman or a pile of fresh baked bread in there somewhere.

I came from a grow and prepare your own food kind of community. Food was the driving force behind our tight knit extended family. Raising animals, growing acres of potatoes and tending backyard gardens while curing meat, preserving fruit, baking bread and cakes, and cooking huge spreads for dozens of family and friends - was all we seemed to do. So it stands to reason that when I arrived in a place I didn’t understand, a way for me to unravel that culture was by pointing my camera at the thing I recognised and understood. Food.

This may be my first ever food photograph.

We were getting lunch at a bake house in the Armenian quarter of the old city. A Turkish or probably Armenian style bread formed into a pan shape - like a pie crust and filled with eggs, peppers and tomato, then topped with sheep cheese.
This is one of these moments that informed my career.
I had a machine to remember what it looked like - I wish I could have recorded what it smelt and tasted like as well - it looks promising.