Pixiq

If I had to name one photography project I've done in the past five years that I'm most proud of, the 2010 series Excess  is probably it.  What started as a bit of a joke turned into a very ambitious and technically challenging effort. 
It all started with the cake idea.  My mom had given me a large vase from Ikea when I moved into my current apartment, and I kept thinking every time I happened to glance at it "Wouldn't it be cool to fill that thing up with milk, and bake a giant slice of cake to go with it?"   In early May I finally stopped thinking about it and went ahead:

I first took the vase to a glass cutter to have the top few inches sliced off, as it was proportionally too tall to really look like a typical drinking glass.  I then asked my brother, (who's a wiz at creating things from metal) if he could make a giant fork for me, scaled to match the glass.  (The fork is 42 cm/16.5", the glass around 41 cm/16") Once I had these two props ready, I calculated how big I'd need to have this slice of cake in order for the illusion to work.  I figured I'd need to bake two large sheets of cake, cut each into two wedges, and stack them up.  The actual baking process turned out to be much more annoying than I'd anticipated.  The first attempt failed miserably, resulting in a "slice" that was both way too thin and quite ugly, and one very irritated artist cleaning up a kitchenful of crumbs.   I thankfully nailed it on the second go.  My brothers daugher then did an amazing job of modelling for me, managing to look both baffled and slightly bored, which somehow worked perfectly.  After this first photo, I flirted with the possibility of doing a whole series.  In early June, I mentioned this to Jayson Lawfer of the Nevica Project, who loved the idea, and agreed to exhibit the completed series on his gallery page in August.  His encouragement gave me both an extra incentive to continue with the project, and a deadline forcing me to get to work FAST.  So, basically, the rest of my summer was spent brainstorming about what kinds of food could be made in realistic giant portions, and figuring out through trial and error how best to do so.  (My only regret was not having thought of this in mid-winter)

I wasn't sure at first if Cheerios would be possible.  Well, I knew it was "possible", just the idea of baking enough oversized "Cheerios" to fill a punch bowl (in the middle of July) was a bit of a drag.  Also, how does one bake cheerios?  According to the box, they're mostly just made of oats, and some added vitamins and a little sugar and salt.  Not a single damp ingredient indicated, that would make the ground oats actually stick together?  So I improvised.  My cheerios dough contained a lot more than just oats, but it did the job.   My older son was nice enough to help me with the shaping , which we did by punching out circles from the rolled-out dough with the cap from a Pepsi Max bottle,  and using the empty plastic cylinder from a ballpoint pen to punch out the middles:

Yeah. This.. took a while.  

The cookies were probably the easiest to make, (and definitely the most fun to eat).  Each one contained about a cup of dough.  I chose a recipe from Joy of Cooking called "white chocolate macadamia monsters", mostly because it had "monsters" in the title.  I omitted the nuts and switched white chocolate to dark. And, oversized cookies obviously need oversized "chips". This I did by melting a bunch of chocolate and pouring into a shallow box to make a slab nearly an inch thick, which I then chopped. Best cookies ever. 

I really wanted to include lasagne in the series.  In fact, I made two attempts to do so.  I made pasta dough from scratch (twice), rolled out extra thick lasagne sheets, made a bunch of meat sauch and piled it all up with loads of cheese and spinach, twice as tall as a normal lasagne, using just half the baking dish, so that it would look like one big portion.   Both times,  the very promising uncooked thing deflated into pretty normal looking lasagne after baking.  Made for a few good meals tho.   Garfield would have approved.

Rather than give up completely on having a pasta-based dish, I decided to make some huge tagliatelle instead.  (So yes, I made three batches of fresh pasta dough from scratch for this project. I must stress this fact, because making fresh pasta, and shaping it with a rolling pin, is a pain.)   For this picture, my brother made me a knife to go with the fork.  I found the biggest mushrooms available, whipped up a creamy cheese sauce , and the result was a lot more elegant (and tastier) than I dared hope.  The rocket-pretending-to-be-parsley helped.

Of course this series would not have been complete without a burger.  Baking a convincing burger bun (a foot in diameter) took three attempts.  Sunflower seeds took the place of sesame. The burger itself was made from one and a half pounds of beef, (liberally spiced with loads of garlic, pepper, shredded cheddar, and a dash of sweet chili sauce, to make sure I didn't end up with a really thick bland hunk of meat). 

The "fries" were deep-fried strips of sweet-potato (much larger than any available baking potatoes) , and the finishing detail:  Giant ice-cubes frozen in yogurt containers.
As with the cookies and cake,  my kids had no problem helping me eat the props:

While the series is quirky and fun at first glance, there is a more serious underlying meaning behind it.  I feel the kids slightly bored attitude perfectly sums up the problem I'm focusing on here:   We take what we have for granted.  Most people, even those who aren't rich or living some charmed life have access to more food than our ancestors could have imagined in their wildest dreams.  There's an overabundance of material wealth surrounding a large percentage of the worlds population, and yet those fortunate enough to experience that, are usually the ones constantly complaining about ridiculously inconsequential little "problems".   I'm not going to write an extensive lecture here on being thankful for what we have,  but it doesn't hurt to be reminded of it once in a while..