Kyle Dobbins - PHOTOGRAPHY | LARGE FORMAT

Fruits and Vegetables

This is a continuous series that explores foods the come naturally from Earth’s soil. Unlike animals, these foods can be grown in abundance just as nature intended, and no living beings must die. These foods grow on plants and trees that want their seeds to be spread so that they can continue to grow more and more of their kind. Their seeds fall to the ground because the plant and nature are encouraging more of them to grow. These are foods that cannot only be nutritious for humans but can also be nutritious for many of the animals that inhabit and share our planet. One acre of land is only capable of producing 16 pounds of beef, but that same acre of land can produce hundreds of thousands of pounds of fruits and vegetables and nuts and grains, making them incredibly more efficient and sustainable when trying to feed a world population that could reach ten to twelve billion people in the next 80 years. As for the process, these photos were all shot on black and white film with a 4x5 large format camera. Each photo was shot in a dark room using only one steady spotlight as the light source and one white foam reflector on the opposite side of the light source. One large black sheet of cotton fabric was used for the backdrop to make these fruits and vegetables appear suspended in space. Each photo was taken using an aperture of F/74 and prolonged exposure times ranging from 60 to 90 seconds. Shooting these on film with a prolonged exposure time allows for incredible detail when the film slides are enlarged. And while many of these fruits and vegetables are very colorful, by shooting these in black and white the foods begin to take on unearthly forms, sometimes even alien. Some of these fruits and vegetables take on human form while some even become erotic and uncomfortable. These photos explore the beauty of nature’s candy and turn them into something bigger than themselves - something bigger than us.