Shoot the Chef is a highlight of the Crave Sydney International Food Festival, which calls professional and student photographers to ‘shoot’ a culinary identity. What happens next is only limited by the imagination. Previous entrants have been draped in seaweed, strapped to railway tracks, covered in caviar and auctioned off at the Sydney Fish Market.
This year’s entries includes scenes reminiscent of Rocky Balboa while local superstars Peter Gilmore, Mark Best, Ben Shewry and Andrew McConnell were all ‘arrested’ for crimes of passion. Entrants even ventured overseas with shots from Positano, Italy and the south of France.
2011’s professional winner was Christopher Ireland, with Italian food reviewer and teacher Luciana Sampogna as his subject (left in the picture). Sampogna wore tagliatelle in her hair, inspired by the great Lucrezia Borgia, whose long blond hair first inspired a Bolognese chef to create tagliatelle. The student winner was Henry Bois de Chesne who shot Hassan M’Souli with his daughter Nerette, at their family restaurant Out of Africa (right in the picture above). M’Souli prepares over 200 tajines a week and the winning photograph captures M’Souli raising the lid of a large tajine to reveal his two year old daughter, dressed up in her own mini chef whites.
At the end of the month, the top shots will be auctioned off for charity, with money raised will be donated to Oz Harvest - a Sydney charity which re-distributes excess food (from restaurants and supermarkets) to those in need.
Shoot the Chef Exhibition
October 6 - 28
2 Chifley Square
Sydney