The 13th edition of the Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year competition will once again showcase the best culinary photographs and films from around the world. Among the 26 categories competing in 2024, there is a focus on the “Champagne Taittinger Food for Celebration,” which highlights the relationship between festivities, ceremonies, and food.
The setting is a room in the royal castle of Stockholm illuminated with the orange hues of candles and a chandelier. A majestic double door opens to a long hall where guests, seated around a table, await the beginning of the meal. This grand and delicate scene, captured by photographer Jonas Borg and titled “Dinner with the King and Queen of Sweden,” was the 2023 winner of the “Champagne Taittinger Food for Celebration” category, part of the Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year competition, the world’s largest celebration of culinary photography and film.
Among the twenty or so categories in the 2024 edition of the competition (Tiptree Cake Award, Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers, Street food, etc.), the “Champagne Taittinger Food for Celebration” category is one of the most anticipated. It invites professional and amateur photographers to submit their snapshots and interpretations of the relationship between food and celebration. The call for entries is open until Sunday, February 4, 2024, and already includes submissions such as a grandfather modestly preparing a dish in a dining room adorned with pennant garlands, a scene of joy in a cramped room with food and plastic cups, a crowd sharing a meal on a Chinese street, and a joyful outdoor reinterpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper.
Diversity and quality of contributions are at the heart of this category, allowing everyone to interpret the notion of “Celebration” in their own way. Documentary photography, composition, polished or unrestrained aesthetics—this variety is championed by Champagne Taittinger, a partner in two categories of the Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year competition: “Food for Celebration” and “Wedding Food Photographer.” The Reims-based company places art at the center of its champagne collection, presenting each of its bottle collections adorned with works of art since 1983. The latest, from 2016, featured a photograph by Sebastiao Salgado.
“Our mission is to showcase culinary stories from around the world: whether it’s the beauty or drama of food, feasts or famine, weddings, or food aid. Food brings everything together, and photography captures that so powerfully,” summarizes Caroline Kenyon, founder of the Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year competition in 2011. To succeed in the “Champagne Taittinger Food for Celebration” category, following Jonas Borg’s royal scene or Chen Yings’ creation of dumplings in a street in the Fujian province of China, which rewarded him in 2022, Caroline Kenyon and the jury members (including David Loftus, a culinary photographer who has collaborated with top chefs) will be attentive to all proposals. A commitment to continue “celebrating the incredible culinary stories that photography can tell.”
More information
For more information and to participate in the competition, please visit the website www.pinkladyfoodphotographeroftheyear.com.
