Gourmandise
November 2nd, 2009 | by CW |“Gourmandise is an impassioned, rational and habitual preference for all objects that flatter the sense of taste.” — Jean Antheleme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste
Conde Nast announced it will stop publishing Gourmet magazine with the November 2009 issue. Not much to give thanks about. I loved reading Gourmet, especially under Ruth Reichl’s direction. Great journalism, great writing, great ideas. I was not enamored of the party photo shoots that looked too much like ads for Banana Republic, but the images in the travel stories and food photography were generally outstanding. As with the writing, the photographic choices could be smart too — they hired Gueorgui Pinkhassov to shoot stories for them!! They had over a million subscribers, but the business model based on ads by shallow premium goods advertisers collapsed (according to the bosses.) The advertisers are idiots. Or the sales staff at CN. The magazine was about the culture of food and eating and life!
Not what the bloggo-pundits are saying — an elite, effete, out-of-touch rag. As if idiot savant home cooks can write and photograph as well as the people Gourmet had hired. Here and there, marginally, but by and large the food blogs are for recipes, not for in-depth food writing.
Where are we going to get satisfying-as-a-bowl-of-pasta food writing now?
UPDATE: Just found Last Days of Gourmet blog. 3/11/09
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I had the good fortune to shoot a feature for Gourmet in 2004. A great treat for me to wander, taste and photograph in one of my favorite countries; Vietnam. The story was a great balance of travel, if you wanted to go there and just food culture (fish sauce), if you stayed in the kitchen.
(The lab shot was chosen for American Photography 21 website.)
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P.S. Never did upgrade to WP 2.8.5 — too much of a chance to crash the whole blog and suddenly my old version started uploading images again. So I hope to be posting more frequently.
