in focus: kang leong

wedding by kang l.

It has been a couple of months since my first in focus interview and today I am thrilled to bring to you, Kang Leong–sometimes known as “John Woo” or simply LondonEater. Following my usual MO, I asked Kang to send me a photograph and then I fired off a set of questions for him to answer. Kang is the author of LondonEater, a London foodblog so I fully expected him to submit a mouthwatering image of his latest restaurant conquest. To my surprise, instead he sent the wonderfully warm and touching image above.

In seven words or less, tell us why you selected this particular image to showcase.
Contrast, history, wisdom, happiness, longing and Life.

But at the same time, I’m not just aiming to create ‘a perfect food shot’; in my mind’s eye I am looking for a story, I am looking for that angle to breath life and more than anything, I am looking for the character in a dish. I try not to re-style the dish whenever it comes out from the kitchen, because I want to photograph it as the chef originally intended. In other words, the chef has instilled a character into the dish. Food is very dear to my heart, reviewing dishes also means that dishes and tastes speak to me in a subtle way (you can try this: close your eyes when you eat, let it linger on your tongue and then just think about what flavours, tastes are crossing your mind, like that scene in the film Ratatouille, take the time, slow down and just relish the moment), communicating that feeling is a bit like paying attention to whispers in harrowing silence…it is there, you just need to record it.

That character, that taste, that one single moment where it grabs you by the scruff – that’s what I want to capture in my work, once you nail the essence of the dish, it demands attention, and then all technical issues fall away. That is most challenging part.

How is expressing yourself through writing about food different from how you express yourself through your food photography?
It’s not – they are just different forms of communicating the same story, the same core and to deliver the experience of the food/dish to the reader.

My approach to food is unorthodox because I’m not aiming to write from a ‘objective’ point of view, I’m not writing ‘about’ food. I’m writing about what I feel about food. The difference may seem subtle on the surface, but both are wildly different things, the former is a 3rd person perspective, more like a discussion, it’s post mortem and an after the fact report. The latter is solitary, spotlight aimed squarely at the writer, it is personal and it’s the account of the experience and the moment; and in a way, the story is alive.

I’m a great lover of Gonzo journalism (pioneered by Hunter S Thompson), and his work puts the writer squarely in the middle of the story, becoming part of the story. With food being such a subjective topic and a personal one in many respects (every tastebud is indeed different) that in order to write about it, I felt I had to describe the experience holistically and dissect the character of the dish and flesh out what it was saying to me.

If you were limited to only one method of conveying how you feel about food which would you choose?
Photography. Food is rich, colourful, vibrant and full of life and photography is a medium which allows us to capture that moment of life, a slice of life, as we see it. It’s a way of representing the vision of what my mind’s eye sees and what my tastebuds feel.

Photographically speaking, what “one thing” have you learnt so far that has changed everything for you?
You need to get up close and personal to your subject, like the way street photogs work with a wide-angle, getting close to the food in the similar way gives it a personal feeling and that’s one thing which is changing the way I view, not just food, but photography in general.

If you could shoot with any other photographer—past or present—who would it be and why?
Present, it would have to be Dan Winters. His portraits feature subdued colours and the very diffused, soft lighting harks back to the renaissance. More than anything though, his portrait work seemingly transform his subjects into almost another time, and I feel that he is – like the founding fathers of the medium – painting with light. Breathtaking.

Past. Who wouldn’t have wanted to observe how Henri Cartier Bresson engaged his decisive moments, but I am also haunted by Diane Arbus’s work, the little boy with the toy grenade and the scrunched up hand. Her work manages to peer into the souls of her subjects, chilling as it was, the character in her work was striking and her work, very simply, made me feel.

Is there anything that you absolutely do not or would not eat?
Parsley, not my favourite food, given a choice I would absolutely avoid like the plague, but under duress, I will eat anything anyone puts in front of me.

Kang writes two restaurant reviews each week plus he has a bi-monthly newsletter in which he summarizes the best restaurants he has visited in the month. Don’t forget to check out the site devoted exclusively to his photography and join me in following him on Twitter. Thanks Kang–it’s been a slice and maybe we can do the whole meatloaf when I am next in London!