Noma: Time And Place In Nordic Cuisine

If you are somewhat interested in the world of fine cuisine and gastronomy, you might have already heard about Noma or even seen the cookbook. I keep coming back to this book even after almost two years since it was first published. It has lots of beautiful photographs and recipes – do not assume you can easily re-create the dishes at home though. Noma was recognized as the best restaurant in the world by the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurant awards three times in a row now (since 2010). Head chef Rene Redzepi helped re-inventing Nordic cuisine, which is all about purity, simplicity, and freshness as well as increased use of seasonal local products. I have not been to Noma yet unfortunately, but fellow food blogger The Skinny Bib has and if you want to see more dishes and read about his experience follow this link. Many of you who are following me on Twitter or Instagram might know that I have developed a huge interest in food and the world of gastronomy in general, so there might be more entries in the future about all that.

© Phaidon Press Ltd

You And I by Ryan McGinley

Ryan McGinley doesn't need much of an introduction as he is surely one of the most popular photographer/artists on the interwebs these days. Twin Palms recently published this big book collecting some of McGinley's favourite photographs from the past twelve years. I pretty much recommend this book to anyone who has the slightest interest in this photographer's work as they have never been published in such a big format before (his previously published zines or books have been less than half the size). Check out some shots of the book below or visit his website to see his other photographs.

© Ryan McGinley and published by Twin Palms

Go-Sees by Juergen Teller

I recently made myself an early christmas present and purchased this book from a reseller on amazon.com. Go-Sees by Juergen Teller was published back in 1999 by Scalo (doesn't exist anymore unfortunately but was one of the big art book publishers back then) and printed by Steidl (very popular art book publisher today). The book contains lots of portraits of young girls by Juergen Teller that visited him in his atelier in London during the late 90s to present themselves in hope to maybe get the photographer's attention for a consideration in the future. Those visits are called go-sees in the fashion industry. As more and more agency called Teller if they could send some models to his atelier, he told them not to just send the ones the agencies thought were interesting or pretty but to simply send all of the girls they have. So the book presents a really nice demographic study of models in London back in the late 90s.

© Juergen Teller and Scalo

Marc Jacobs Advertising 1998-2009

I recently bought this book called Marc Jacobs Advertising 1998-2009 which contains all the photographs Juergen Teller took for Marc Jacobs during that time period. I have been a fan of Juergen Teller's work for quite a long time and he is among my favourites (Ryan McGinley, Walter Pfeiffer, Lina Scheynius and the Magnum ones). What I find interesting is that his photographs appear to be random snapshots at first but somehow possess their very own aesthetics. I am sure the settings and compositions are often put together very carefully despite how simple it might look. It is great for a brand like Marc Jacobs to collaborate with the same photographer for so long because it makes their advertisings instantly recognizable and gives them an own strong voice and identity. There are many celebrities and artists featured in the ads like Sofia Coppola, Dakota Fanning, Meg White and Ryan McGinley. I am pretty happy about the book and its quality, I only wished they would have made some of the horizontal pictures bigger than how they actually looked in the ad campaign.

(click to enlarge)

All photography © Juergen Teller and published by Steidl