Posed Inner Cravings

Photography By Jesse Warner

Chef and photographer Jesse Warner has been making a name for himself in the New York City art world by creating images of models interacting with different types of food. Jesse opens up about the vulnerability of eating in front of someone, being goofy at the dinner table, and the story of the glitter filled spaghetti.

New York City, USA

How did you begin your journey as a photographer?

My interest in photography started early on, but my journey started much later. My mom was an amateur photographer, and we always had disposable cameras when we went on trips. Even as a kid I had a Fisher Price 110 camera around my neck. In high school, I was lucky enough to take the last photography course before it went digital, so I learned how to develop my own black and white photos and the basics of photography. To me, it was fascinating to watch the image come to life like magic right before your eyes. Getting film back and looking at memories a week later was always special to me. Despite all of this, I shot maybe one or two rolls in all of my years in college, because I was dead broke and was dissuaded from pursuing my dreams by people who did not take me seriously. I was also way more involved with booking bands and running a record label, so music was my passion back then.

It wasn't until I moved to New York City about 7 years ago that I expressed to my uncle who was a sports radio host and had used a Canon Rebel G to shoot events my interest in getting into it. I didn't have any money for any equipment and did not believe in myself, but if it wasn't for him, I would have probably never have rationalized picking up a camera.

The next time I saw him, he gave me my first camera and a couple rolls of expired Fujifilm and the rest is history. I started using photography as a way to explore a city that was new to me, going to locations of interest like Flushing and venturing into Manhattan to practice street photography. After getting comfortable shooting non-candids, I started walking up to interesting looking strangers asking if I could get their story and get a portrait of them. The reason I moved to New York City was to get into journalism, but realized that I despise writing.

After a while, I decided I was ready to shoot portraits, so I went on Craigslist and found my first two models, because I didn't know anybody when I moved here. There have been some incredible people that believed in me when I had no portfolio, some of them I still keep in touch with to this day and have shot recently. It's amazing to shoot the same person after years, because you get to see how both of you have grown along the way.

What have you learned along the way?

I have learned to trust in the process and the struggle. It's not easy to be a photographer in New York City and stand out. Here, every creative field is saturated. To create something that someone can look at your work and know it's you is incredibly difficult. It's important to block out all of the voices from people that don't believe in you, and want you to fit into their framework of happiness. Never ask somebody for directions that isn't going the same way as you. There is never a right time for anything, so you might as well just take the risk. If you shoot your shot and fail, you're still in the same place as not trying at all, so you might as well give it a go.

How would you describe your photography style?

My photos have been described as baroque. I use direct flash and very tight shots of people interacting with food. It's describing the dichotomy of the model's posed self versus their inner cravings. My message is to be yourself and don't follow social norms just because they are what everybody else is doing. There's nothing wrong with eating mass amounts of carbs, and being a little goofy at the dinner table, because life is so short and why take it seriously. There is also an underlying message of vulnerability when it comes to eating in front of somebody, but also wearing something nice while eating something saucy. My photo style is heavily influenced by growing up in the 90s and seeing my childhood taken on kodak stock film with hyper saturated reds and blotchy grain. When you're a kid, you're not a model- you're a kid who is probably looking the wrong way, picking your nose, and probably doing something really weird. For this reason, I'm constantly chasing that nostalgic candid-ness of this type of photo. My favorite photos are always when somebody says "let's do a silly one", because it allows you to show your true self instead of that fake cheesy smile everybody wants.

I credit part of my style to my background in DIY punk and emo. In college, I started listening to a lot of Bob Dylan and then folk punk from my Freshman year roommate who was a folk musician. He was from Hershey, Pennsylvania so we would frequently take trips along the Susquehanna River and hung out with his friends in Trunks & Tales. They ran a venue out of their house in Annville, PA called The Chicken Coop. In that scene, I met a few people from the band Common Enemy, one member in particular Gary Critical ran a house venue called Ratmilk in Kutztown, Pennsylvania where I went to school. It happens to be the hometown of Keith Haring and where emo bands like The Jazz June had their start. Years later, Gary became my roommate and while we were very high, he jokingly asked me if I would be the vocalist of this band he was starting called Hashgrinder, which I did not take seriously and got kicked out when they found a real vocalist months later. After attending shows for years, a couple of my friends took over the venue and renamed it The Spaghetti House ironically enough. While this was all going on, I started an organization that started booking music on and off-campus which was a complete mess in a small rural town. I somehow convinced somebody to let me book a show in the lobby of a dorm, multiple times the cops showed up at this art gallery called Eckhaus "downtown" that was completely made of glass and everybody was openly drinking. I was trying to book my friends in a band from Philadelphia called Girl Scouts, who were friends with Alex G, so I somehow convinced this elderly couple that ran an old man pool hall to let me use their sideroom. I had no idea who he was at the time, but he has been quoted as the first show he tried out going electric with a full band. One time I had a 25 piece band play at the farmhouse I lived in where maybe 10 people showed up. The band White Reaper stayed at my house for a whole week, while I tried to pull together a show for them, but instead we just hung out. The amount of bands I've seen at a farm party in somebody's barn while a whole pig roasts is more than I can count. I suppose what I'm saying is that people think of rural small towns and places where nothing goes on, but it's really driven me to believe that if you can make things happen out there, the big city has no limits.

You have become known for your food portraits, where the subjects are photographed eating or interacting with food. What inspired you to do this?

After I shot "Glitter Spaghetti", I looked at my existing body of work and noticed that I had already been shooting a lot of people interacting with food without even realizing it. The photo simply solidified my style and made me re-evaluate the direction I wanted to go with my art. A lot of why I'm so focused on food is because it is how I've viewed the world my whole life "food brings people together".

Growing up, I was very quiet and socially anxious, but always found peace in the kitchen. I remember my parents would send me to all sorts of weird camps every summer to see what I was interested in. One of the first ones was this jock camp where we played sports all day. Every day I would run away and hide in the kitchen to hang out with the moms who taught me how to make monkey bread and cook simple dishes. My parents didn't know how to cook, so I ate a lot of tasteless burgers, unpleasant and sometimes raw chicken. I remember the first time my grandma brought me to TGI Fridays and told me to order the burger. I told her I hated burgers, but she insisted I order the Jack Daniels burger. The first bite, I was amazed that simply grilling the burger and cooking it properly, and even adding salt could excite my tastebuds. My other grandma exposed me to Chinese food and sushi. One of the first things I made from start to finish was General Tsao's chicken. Shortly after, I tried to make creme brulee without a blowtorch. I became obsessed with the show Iron Chef, and decided that I wanted to explore culinary arts when I was older. Years later, I ended up working at a Mexican restaurant because I needed a job, which became the hottest restaurant on every ranking for 6 months. When the Michelin Stars were announced, we managed to get one, which was completely unexpected to me, because we worked extremely hard for it, but I had no concept that we were even in the running.

A lot of my shoots throughout the three and a half years I was there were a rebellion against the "pretty plates" that I had to make. After work, I would have a photoshoot where I could squirt sauce everywhere and there was no angry chef yelling at me. In fact, it was encouraged. When you cook, your plate is your canvas, so I wanted to translate the things that I was seeing into something that I identified with. When I was building sauces, we stored our oil on the top shelf so we needed a ladder. Eventually, I got very efficient by pouring the oil from the top of the ladder into my 1/8 pan resting on the scale and would save time by not having to climb all the way down, use it, and bring the oil back up. It was a small kitchen, so bringing out the ladder caused quite a stir. The visual of this angered the sous chef at the time, but inspired a lot of my "pour shots". The way that oil-based sauces versus water based sauces react together inspired many color schemes for my shoots as well. The chaos of the kitchen inspired maximalism. The way that paint drips reminds me of the plating techniques that I learned throughout my years and the way sauce moves. I cook my own wheat paste using French culinary technique. Street art reminds me a lot of my culinary days in the sense that there is a lot of ego, and it can be very cutthroat. You have to be quick, efficient, and there's always somebody right on your tail telling you you've done something wrong.

What is the process behind organizing a food portrait?

I pick the models based on vibe, which is very hard to quantify into words. There was a time when I only shot models on agencies, because I believed it made me seem like a more established photographer, but now I go mostly for people that are interesting in some fashion. There are a lot of factors that go into picking models, but a lot of times it's the most fun to shoot friends. I believe that anybody can be a model, but it's important that you get along with each other so that the photos feel natural and candid. If the model or photographer are not fully comfortable sharing a meal together, then it will show in the photos. Sometimes, I'll ask the model what their favorite foods are and try to pick the most photogenic one. There are some foods that are delicious, but incredibly hard to shoot. Obviously, noodles and pizza are the most photogenic foods, but tacos are really not. The first question I'll ask is if the model has a photogenic kitchen or living room, because I prefer natural spaces. Lately, I've been partnering with restaurants which has really streamlined the food costs, styling, and natural space troubles. I've become somewhat of a glorified influencer that actually provides quality promotion, because I only work with restaurants that are good and not just aesthetic.

What sort of difficulties do you come across while on these shoots? What are the least difficult parts behind this process?

It depends on the shoot, but a lot of time it's finding the time or energy to make anything. I get in my own head a lot, so everything has gone wrong before I step foot outside the door. It's taken a while for me to forgive myself after a shoot thinking of all the ways I could have made it better after the fact, but there is beauty in the imperfection in some ways. I shoot slowly and intentionally due to learning on film, so when I work with agency models, they move quickly, not realizing that I still haven't taken a single shot 25 poses in and am waiting for the right moment to catch them off guard. Those are the best shots, because candid emotion is truly who you are. Capturing somebody's raw essence is one of the hardest things to do. It's hard not to have fun on my photoshoots for me, so being able to laugh at the ridiculousness makes everything easy and lighthearted.

Tell the story behind one of your images.

My most notable work, titled “Glitter Spaghetti” was shot about 4 years ago, and was kind of a fluke that inspired the vision that I have now. Linsday Tuttles, the legend herself, had been interacting with my photos every single day for about a month until one day I reached out to ask if she would like to shoot. It turns out, she was looking for somebody to shoot her band Vat of Acid, but they had just broken up when I finally reached out because they all did too much ketamine and went crazy. She is a legendary noise musician from Miami that goes by Surf Hair that hangs out with Thurston Moore and Rat Bastard at the International Noise Conference. She invited me to shoot her solo out in Far Rockaway in the middle of the winter over an hour away by subway. Seeking an adventure, I decided it was worth the risk of meeting somebody that looked like an interesting subject.

The photos we took were awesome- candids of her shopping and going about her daily routine. I loved the black lipstick on her teeth, the wind tossing her hair around in a crazy way, the beauty in the chaos. We parted, and I thought that it would be a one off shoot that went well. She was obsessed with this photographer Jane Pane who shoots a lot of weirdo bands that play at Trans Pecos and other underground music venues on film. I wanted to do something with food, and she wanted something completely absurd and being a chef I wanted to do something with food, so we covered spaghetti with glitter. Yes, she did eat it and no it was not edible glitter. It was shot on Kodak Ultramax 400 in my living room/kitchen at my first apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It was a tiny apartment infested with cockroaches and mice that was made for Polish construction workers to simply have a place to get some sleep and get back to work. My room had a twin sized bed that took up 3/4 of the room and five people lived there at one point despite there only being 3 bedrooms, but some of my best early work was shot in that apartment with a ring light in my sideroom. I had a completely different idea of what I wanted the image to be, which would have been a complete failure. If you notice, there's a splash of light in the top right corner, because I shot this entire thing in a completely pitch black room on my kitchen table with just a disco ball. I was hoping the disco ball would catch some of the glitter and be a somewhat edgy long exposure. I'm going to admit that I had no idea how to use my camera at this point in my career, and it was the stupidest idea ever. Previously, I had done a shoot that I tried this concept and it came out not great, so I had the idea to turn the flash on for literally one of the shots. Out of 36 photos, only one came out not entirely trash, and that is the photo that people know today. If it wasn't for the idea that maybe I should do one to play it safe, I would have never created anything that you see today.

You are currently based in New York City. What is like being an artist in New York? What do you love about it and what are some challenges?

New York City is an absolute dream to create in. I moved here to never be the biggest fish in any pond and constantly be growing, while being pushed and challenged by other artists. The art community here is really connected no matter what medium, everybody seems to know each other. The inspiration I get from other artists and culture that is on every corner on the streets and museums and within the people that you meet always keeps you on your toes.

The struggle is that the cost of living is so high here so staying afloat financially while chasing your dream is a hard balance. Finding the energy and brainpower to even think of creating anything is a huge challenge, especially as a chef that works long and physically demanding hours. The competition is fierce and sometimes cutthroat, in the sense that there is only a finite amount of space and so many people trying to take up space. Street art and being a chef sometimes are similar in the chaos of having to fight for your platform and "run and gun" style energy and just making things work with what you have available. You have to be quick and discreet. The amount of stimulation and oversaturation of media also makes it hard to stand out and get attention. The politics of the art scene can sometimes be wild as well, if you hang out with the wrong people or even like the wrong social media post, you can be seen as rolling with their crew and grouped into their drama. It's hard to stay afloat, because everything moves so quickly and attention span is so short here that people will forget about you unless you constantly bombard them with reminders that you exist. The overstimulation also gets overwhelming, so the key is to get out of the city every once in a while and provide yourself with peace for when you return to the jungle.

You recently had a solo show called "Jesse Warner Shot Me at Mr. Kills". How did it go? Who else was involved? What kind of planning went into this event?

It was my first solo show at a third space called Mr. Kills which was an absolute dream. I was expecting maybe 50 people to attend, but I believe we had close to 200 throughout the night. The space is a loft, so upstairs I had my photography on display, while I shot people on a polaroid. I wanted to provide instant gratification and a memory to take home from the show. We paired with a ramen popup that might be the best Ton Ton Ramen I've ever had. The experience of having guests open the door and being immersed with a steamy, warm, fragrant smell of ramen while they viewed my art was exactly like I wanted- multisensory. You could taste, touch, and view the art and experience the feeling of "crave". It was also used as a prop for my polaroid photos, which allowed you to become one of my food models. Downstairs, I knew I had to honor all of the incredible street artists that I've collaborated with, some of them created pieces just for the show. My crew, Spaghetti Mafia was represented by FlyFlyLes, The Clay Universe, Drips, Sold Out Art Show, Aic Mosiac, Divey Sinclair, Cartoon Car Slaps,Cherries Nobody, Unforch Foods, and more. I also wanted to bring in Kalcium Fortified from Gallery BQE, a street art gallery crew that wheatpastes under the BQE highway. My "crew" in Paris was also represented, Writers 2 Cuisine. When I was in Paris, I kept seeing their tag and stickers and was able to meetup with the head of the crew to have a petit espresso and chat about Paris street art. I planned for a full month for the event, waking up early and going to bed late. I must have changed the direction of the event a million times, every day I had a new idea or concept to add, in my head it was never complete even down the day things were changed on the fly. I am a huge perfectionist when it comes to major projects, and I needed everything to go without a hitch. Between coordinating with all of the collaborations, meeting up with some of the San Diego crew in Philly, and planning the show, it took a lot out of me. FlyFlyLES and Aic Mosaic really kept me level headed during the whole process. Having my friends there to make sure everything was going smoothly during the day of the event allowed me to focus on shooting and having a good time. I put so much into the show that afterwards, I felt kind of empty and tried to figure out motivation to create again. The time between Christmas and New Years, I did a lot of processing of the direction I wanted to go and the next step.

If you can photograph any person in the world, alive or dead, who would you want to photograph? And which type of food?

This one is very easy for me, and sadly they are no longer alive. Anthony Bourdaine would be my dream shoot eating Asian noodles. He is one of the most important figures to me in terms of being a chef, as well as being a journalist and curious person about the world. What I appreciate about him is that he just listened and let the locals tell their story. The way he intertwines food and politics also is admirable, showing how food brings people together and builds communities. I love the story of how he doubted himself before submitting Kitchen Confidential to a local newspaper, but was a chef who recognized he was getting older and couldn't grow much more culinarily. I would love to share a meal with him, and capture his first bite of a big bowl of noodles- beer in hand.

Other than photography and food, what other interests do you have?

My life honestly revolves around photography, food, and street art at this point. When I'm with my friends, I enjoy getting a few drinks, painting in the bathroom, taking photos of each other eating hotdogs, and getting a cheap bite of pizza or a halal cart. I love nature, though. I'm incredibly interested in mushroom foraging, camping, hiking, and touching grass. I appreciate museums, art shows, the opera, and trying new experiences.

What's next for you?

Right now, I'm poking fun at influencer culture by promoting restaurants and brands that I actually think are run by good people. I'm establishing my portfolio as leverage for when I want to approach the big dogs who have the big bucks, and in the meantime meeting incredible small business owners that would benefit from my style of photography. Mr. Kills and I are in talks about having a monthly themed event and possibly partner with brand sponsorships that want to recreate how Red Bull used to sponsor artists to establish credibility with the youth. I'm slowly exploring the world of Youtube by making video mukbangs, because I'm pretty much already doing the still photo version of that. I'll be hosting a salon show for lens-based mediums at The Greenpoint Gallery where I am an artist in residence on February 21st to curate my first show. Curating is where I want to explore, creating spaces for artists to show their work that really deserve to be shown. What I want to do more than anything is hold NYC's first international wheatpaste festival in the spring, and have a section dedicated to photographers that normally do not partake in street art to empower others to find unconventional ways to show their work. A lot of artists are focused on getting into galleries and getting published, but why not make the street your gallery and make a zine instead? Speaking of which, I'm working on my first photo zine, but that's kind of a secret project and I've already said too much.