Alban Couturier does not photograph dishes but culinary stories. Rather than capturing the image of chefs, he captures personalities. His shots narrate the complicity between the two sides of the lens: the eye of an artist retranscribing the creation of another. Difficult to miss his portrait of chef Alléno in the last 2019 edition of 3 Etoiles Magazine. Today, he lays for vendom.jobs the outlines of a career shaped by an insatiable curiosity and a strong appetite for encounters.
Vendom.jobs – How and why did you choose photography and how did you come to food photography?
Alban Couturier – I am an autodidact. I received my first camera as a gift from my father when I was 20 years old and that is about when I started to photograph almost everything. Photography became a passion. I tried my hand at many very different things. My first specialty was art photographer: more specifically, I worked on painting reproductions for the Marmottan museum and the Institut de France, an activity that taught me much on colorimetry. But one day I felt the desire to diversify my work. I started working as a photographer for industrial reports, an experience that gave me the chance to photograph ARIANE 5. Some of my clients kept encouraging me to open a studio. At the time, I was specializing in liquids, I worked on transparency and I was making campaigns for Hennessy.
Chef Alexis Le Tadic, Le Barn, Bonnelles
The years 2000 were a turning point for me. The digital era forced us photographers to relearn our work and reinvest in new equipment. The company Ventesprivees.com contacted me and we started a long collaboration which gave me a strong experience on digital photography.
V.J. – How did you approach chefs?
A. C. – Besides photography, I nurture another passion for cooking. My partner is an artistic director, she always advises me a lot. She pushed me to leave my comfort zone. At the time, I was represented by CAPA and was invited to make a series of photographs for Philippe Labbe at L’Abeille**. There, I also met François Perret, who was then working at the Shangri-La Paris. This is how I started in food photography. François Perret called me two years afterwards to take part in the Festival international de l’image culinaire in Oloron-Sainte-Marie (International Festival of food image). There, I met many chefs, in particular Julien Roucheteau, who was chef at the Lancaster* at the time. I worked for Art&Gastronomie and now I regularly collaborate with 3 Etoiles Magazine.
V.J – How do you work with chefs?
A. C. – I always take my equipment with me when I go at a chef’s place. I developed a personal way to photograph dishes. For example, I refuse to place a dish on a white background. I prefer to take an element from it and use it in the scene, make a decoration out of it. As I started as a still life photographer, I like organizing my works. I consider that as an alternative way to allude to the love of good food. This is what food photography really is about.
Chef Raffaele de Mase, Tosca, Paris
V.J. – Rendering something that is supposed to fill all senses, simply through the prism of sight, seems to be a particular art. And indeed, chefs highlight the need for a more global experience. From what angle do you approach a chef’s creations?
A. C. – Let me give you an example to illustrate the way I proceed. Romain Bonnet, owner of restaurant Omija in Nantes (https://www.omija.fr/) and formerly second in command of J. Roucheteau, prepared a hare à la royale served with puffed shell-shaped potatoes. I photographed one of these, which I multiplied on Photoshop to create a background for the dish.
I rarely rework elements that way in Photoshop, but I like to reuse them, like scallops, oysters or fish skins… to make decorations out of them. That gives an unsuspected power to the dish besides highlighting the natural essence of the product. I do not use lacquer; I simply enhance the product with a paintbrush and oil.
There is another advantage in using the recipe’s products: it gives the readers a better understanding of the gustatory experience through the illustration of the various components.
V.J. – Are your chef portraits very different? Where do you draw your inspiration from when photographing them?
A. C. – Working on site, with teams, naturally led me to portraits. Some chefs even requested portraits from the very beginning. Photography portraits are quite a developed part of my current activity (I recently realised a series of portraits for Servier Laboratories). I have my own post-production working approach, somewhere between colour and black & white. It can be considered as my own signature light, which brings a different tessitura to the image.
Chef David Toutain, Restaurant David Toutain**, Paris
I try to capture a little part of their soul, so as not to face a simple staid pause. My objective is to create portraits that spark the will to meet the person. Chefs have rather voluntary personalities and they play along quite easily in the end.
I worked six months with Thibault Danancher, food critic at Le Point and I learned to quickly capture the ambiance not only of a restaurant, but also of its kitchens.
V.J. – What advice would you give young photographers considering engaging in this discipline?
A. C. – Food photography requires a solid network – I did not start my career by photographing dishes. I have almost 30 years of photography behind me and these years gave me a strong and successful background in the field. In my view, starting a career as food photographer seems quite perilous. Considering building a diversity of experiences beforehand might be a better option. Retrospectively, I think that these experiences were my very strength, also on a human level. In parallel, I developed a curiosity for domains around gastronomy as well, like oenology. Chefs are accustomed to building strong brigades and teams. The relational and exchange aspect must certainly not be neglected.
Laetitia Girard-Mouline, CEO, The Vendôm Company
https://www.albancouturier.com/
(Photo credit: Alban Couturier)
