The Gourmand #6
Following the monochrome cover of issue five, The Gourmand returns with a blast of colour on a pair of matching covers for its latest edition. Highlighting a celebration of ketchup inside the mag, the artificial chip and burger images (created by Rachel Thomas, shot be Jenny van Summers) set the tone for a very photographic issue of the food and culture journal.
Other highlights include artist Roe Ethridge’s rumaination on kids and food (above), a pleasingly abstract diversion from the more focused food stories elsewhere, and Scheltens & Abbenes’ stunning images of vacuum-packed picnic food that blur the line between photography and illustration (below).
There’s also an elegant black and white collaboration from Kate Jackling and Gemma Tickle.
It’s not all photography, though; regular readers will recognise Jean Jullien’s marmalade drawing (above), and Anna Kilpelainen’s Antartica artwork ups the colour quotient further still (below).
Visually, then, this is ticks all the boxes for summer: a bright, vivacious issue as beautifuly produced and printed as we’ve come to expect from team Gourmand.
Alongside this there is simpler bread-and-butter fare. A report from London’s Vauxhall area meets four groups of friends as they east in the area before it experiences a shake-up on the scale of Kings Cross and the Olympic zone; I liked how they lead with the outdoor urinal (above) one of the emblems of today’s Vauxhall.
The magazine always digs up gems from the past, this time an unpublished guide to eating on a shoestring by a US newspaper editor (above). Yoko Ono’s recipes for everyday life also feature, as does John Cages love for mushrooms.
The team also meet top chef Corey Lee, and editor of Interview Russia Aliona Doletskaya. US music producer Steve Albini shares his food secrets (‘Ravioli, that is the answer for everything’ was his father’s advice) and the need for barbecue news – this is a summer issue – is satisfied by a new Bill of Barbecue Rights from Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale.
The Gourmand is one of the independent mags I’ve identified before as exceeding assumptions of what such a magazine can be and this latest issue picks up where issue five left off. It’s another beautiful issue with great attention paid to every detail, a lesson in magazine-making.