Real Food celebrates all things food – a kaleidoscope of foods from all the world over, from hot dogs to sticky buns and langoustine to lemon meringue pie. Featuring photographs taken throughout Martin Parr’s prolific career to-date, Real Food contains the very best of Parr’s iconic imagery – a collection of close-up food shots, in typical garish color, taken by Parr throughout his travels across the world.

Introduced with an essay by Fergus Henderson, British chef and founder of the restaurant St John’s in London, which considers Parr’s photographs in the context of global cuisine, and Parr’s fascination with the social aspect of food that is at the heart of these photographs.

“In 1995 when I bought myself a macro lens, this meant that I could come in much closer. The first thing I did was British food. It was just the time the food renaissance was starting to kick off in the U.K. and yet British food had a terrible reputation. My job was to please the French, and find the worst examples of British food that I possibly could.

Everyone photographs food now; you go to a posh restaurant and everyone is photographing every course with their smartphone. In those days, no one did it at all.

We’re in this food porn era. What I’m trying to do, is to show good examples of the fundamental lie that’s told about food. My job is to show that all the food porn that we’re surrounded by, is actually a lie. That’s the basic truth of our modern life. We’re so used to seeing beautiful plates of posh food in magazines. Real food, is what we really eat.”
- Martin Parr