Early into our chat, Emma Dunham and I find out that we share something in common – we both used to live in Sydney. I reminisce about the ferry from the seaside suburb of Manly, cutting its way across the harbor to Circular Quay, and declare that it must surely be one of the world’s best office commutes. “I know,” she replies, “and they always had this kiosk with these spinach and ricotta pasties. Each day I’d say, ‘I’m not going to eat one, I’m not going to eat one’, and every day I still ate one!”
That a professional food photographer relates a favorite snack to a time when she lived on the other side of the world may not sound surprising. But Emma switched to food photography less than five years ago, having worked as a portrait and commercial photographer for over a decade. Clearly, her love of food had always been there but, as she freely admits, it was when she fell out of love with commercial portraits that she began to look at spinach and ricotta under a new light. As a portrait photographer, she was shooting corporate headshots, rows of schoolchildren and families with their children, but while her subjects were smiling for the camera, Emma was anything but smiles behind it…
