www.modernluxuria.com
The Edible World of Jenna Propp On outsider art and nourishment in an Instagrammed millennium WORDS BY JOE GURBA
Jenna Propp is surprised at being called an artist. She is a self described, “23 year old with a cell phone camera and an Instagram account”. She did not set out to create fine art; nevertheless, she’s amassed a body of photography that deserves the title. Her images capture a vivid relationship between herself and her food. And a wealth of interpretative potential reveals itself to any viewer that chooses to look at her photos as works of Art-with–a-capital-A, much richer in meaning than another Instagram post. Indeed, as the endless stream of images careens past you on the feed (or are they standing still and you the viewer are falling?), Jenna Propp brings the incessant flutter to a halt. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until Propp’s 21st century photo documentation of her food jumped categories from social media fodder to legitimate outsider art. Having recently finished her Bachelor’s degree in Art History at the University of Alberta, Propp came to these Covid lock-down photo ops with a finely tuned eye. Moreover, at 23 years of age, she is one of the so-called digital natives, growing up always armed with a camera. Between her education and her comfort with daily photography, Propp’s sense of colour and composition is heightened beyond that of most folks, regardless of their age. It was the abundant time provided by lock-down when these raw materials coalesced. She suddenly had the leisure to thoroughly plan, prepare, and compose subjects into a cohesive series. The results were simply shared into the world immediately via photo carousels without resorting to any gatekeeper and without pretense. Propp’s obsession with photographing exotic fruits and traditional dishes from ▶
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