Cross-posted from Gilt Taste.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Lexicon of Sustainability is how damn cool it looks. Sure, Douglas Gayeton’s smart, visually packed collages connect the dry terminology of the food movement to real people and places — no small feat. But it’s his super-personal aesthetic and warmth as a storyteller that draw you in.
Gayeton got the idea for the Lexicon project about two years ago, in the middle of a dinner party, when a guest butchered the definition of “food miles.” If Gayeton could define and build out the language of sustainability, he thought, he could give people the tools they needed to bounce around real ideas. To make a change. Gayeton identified 100 key terms and began visiting the farmers, fishermen, foragers, and chefs across the country who could help him define them. “I simply spend time with them. I don’t know what I’m doing in advance and I don’t storyboard anything. I just listen.”
The artist shoots an average of 1,000 photographs with each of his subjects. He then prints the photos out, cutting and pasting up to 100 of them to... Read more
