One of the hottest food photographers on Instagram in the past couple of months is an anonymous user who goes by the name Chef Jacques LaMerde. It’s not the quality of the photos that’s attracting attention, but rather the subject matter. Each of the shots shows cheap junk food arranged to look like the artistic plates found at high-end restaurants.
With just 24 photos posted over 2 months, the account has already attracted a significant amount of media coverage and over 46,000 followers. Here’s a sampling of some of his photos (along with the ingredients found in the captions):
Hand cut Hot Rod, egg yolk, and “intense pickle” Doritos soil:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Feb 5, 2015 at 12:21pm PST
Hot Pockets, Hidden Valley bacon ranch spheres, and a puree of Zoodles:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Feb 7, 2015 at 8:49am PST
Spam torchon with fuzzy peaches, white cheese balls, and nuts with local greens:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Feb 7, 2015 at 9:31am PST
Raspberry Pop-Tart partfait with vanilla snackpack, Grape Crush scented gel, Mike n’ Ikes, Cry Babies, and Fruity Mentos:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Feb 8, 2015 at 1:24pm PST
Hawaiian bagel bites, cheetos, baby carrot and ranch puree, small vegetables, and chipotle oil:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Feb 21, 2015 at 8:25am PST
Craisins, Cheeze Whiz, celery, celery soda caviar, graham cracker soil, canola oil powder, and kale shreds:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Mar 1, 2015 at 9:15am PST
Ready to eat Jimmy Dean sausage, canned spring vegetables, French’s, Frito hoops and pistachio soil, fermented Lake Michigan water and a nutritional yeast rim:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Mar 26, 2015 at 3:13pm PDT
Pepperoni combos, smashed sweet potato, Philly onion dip, Harissa, macro basil, fermented seabeans, and forest plants:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Apr 5, 2015 at 2:18pm PDT
Kraft Handi-Snak with kale chips, ranch corn nuts, Yyves veggie bologna, strubbs sandwich saver pickle, and thousand island dressing:
A photo posted by @chefjacqueslamerde on Apr 11, 2015 at 10:50am PDT
You can follow along with this strange food photo project on Instagram here.
Chef Jacques LaMerde [Instagram via Quartz]
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.