The Kitchen Project:
The Hungry Cat
Santa Barbara, CA

The inspiration to embark on the documentary project of photographing a working professional kitchen was sparked by my passion of food and love of photography, an opportunity to combine the two seemed a natural course to explore. The working kitchen of a restaurant is a rather exclusive site, even in an open kitchen, there is a physical barrier that denies admittance within; the professional kitchen thus becomes a place of mystery, even in its stark nakedness, in its instant recognizability of what a kitchen is supposed to look like, there is still a mark by a foreignness via separation and access. By bringing a camera into the site, what I hoped to show was an uncensored view of life within the kitchen. What was revealed before my lenses spoke more than just the daily workings of the kitchen, it spoke of how men play and work with each other in a masculine space, the different interactions of people had whether through gender, race or ranking within the kitchen. At the same time it made me conscious of my presence both as an outsider and insider within the space. An insider because of the access to a space few had, a chance to capture the emotional and physical toll that the unpredictable job requires, a chance to roam around the engine of a restaurant. Yet the feeling of being outside viewing in was always present, perhaps it was the strong gaze of the camera which at times made the guys very conscious of the lens, or the fact that I no longer worked at the kitchen and was there as a kitchen intern; the barrier that the camera presented was more evident in the beginning, but soon subsided as the place got busy and the guys became accustomed to the idea of being captured on film.

In the series of selected photographs shown, what I hope to show is both the work and play in the kitchen, to show the different interactions that the chefs have with one another, the space and the camera. I want the viewer to see the kitchen for what it is, not a glamourized version seen on TV on shows like Top Chef, but rather to show both the grittiness and coldness of the kitchen, with the beautiful works of art that comes out from the hands of the chefs to the tables of gourmands.

Documentary is an attempt to bring the unseen into the realm of presence and visibility, to capture the life of kitchen through images is no less different.