PDN’s 30. Our Choice of Photographers to Watch
Hayley Harrison

Note to aspiring food photographers: Beware of assignments involving Jell-O. “It’s impossible to make it hold still and look good. It keeps sliding all over the place,” says photographer Hayley Harrison, who had an exasperating experience with the dessert for a Fitness story on foods under 50 calories.

Yet, if anyone can find beauty in something as mundane as Jell-O, it’s Harrison, whose images of a tart or a half-eaten fig distill the pleasure of the foods in a single shot lit with the skill of an Old Master painting.

Harrison’s first pictures in high school were of “rusted things like bolts and screws,” inspired by a metal shop class, and by her mother, who is an antique dealer. She majored in photography at Parsons, then transferred to Art Center, and traveled extensively to Asia, South America, and Europe on her breaks, graduating with a portfolio chock full of landscape and travel work.

“I always had a travel bug,” she explains. “Every summer my mom would throw me, my brother, and our dog into the car for two months and we’d cruise around the country buying stuff till there was no more space left in the car.”

One day Harrison broke out her Linhof 4 x 5 camera, and began taking some shots of vegetables and hasn’t looked back. “I love it,” she says.

It’s a calling that makes sense, given that Harrison loves to tool around New York’s gourmet shops, can wax rhapsodic on the layers of an onion, and has a father who is the official ice cream taster for Edy’s Grand Ice Cream. “I swear I have a really good palate,” she claims.

Ultimately Harrison says she’d love to expand her portfolio to include travel work. At press time, she had flown to Turkey and reported that she was shooting in the fish markets, the bazaars and mosques, and that the rug dealers there “serve this great apple tea that’s just amazing.” When she returns to New York, she plans to work on her book and promos, and with warm weather coming, the spring bounty at the Farmer’s Market is sure to keep her more than enough busy.

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