Food in stores / From my garden
In this project, Lisa uses photography to raise questions regarding the way we know food production today. It started with her growing vegetables. She was fascinated by them and she realized that they do not look like the vegetables we buy in stores. She started taking pictures of her harvest and learned about shifting baseline syndrome – that is when our perception of things changes and becomes the new normal. “Shifting baseline syndrome (SBS) describes a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment due to a lack of human experience, memory and/or knowledge of its past condition” (Masashi Soga, Kevin J Gaston, Shifting baseline syndrome: causes, consequences and implication. 2017). When it comes to the vegetables we eat today, our knowledge and perception of how vegetables look have changed. When we stopped producing our own food to buy it in stores, we lost the knowledge about how a vegetable really looks, growing in the ground and being harvested. Our new perception of vegetables is the image of a vegetable that is available in the store. In her photos, we can see vegetables that come straight from the ground, with all their imperfections. Some of them would probably not be sold in a store. Lisa reflects on the development that in a short time our connection to nature and food production and so much basic knowledge seems to be lost. She thinks about what this will become in the near future. It raises questions like, what happens when only a very small percentage of people have the knowledge to produce food? By taking pictures of the plants, Lisa is exploring how they actually look. She picks the plant, goes to her studio and takes the pictures. She uses daylight from a window close to the garden when taking the pictures. She uses the same light that actually occurs where the plant has grown. Lisa needs to believe that food production will change to be more sustainable in the near future.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Lisa Lindqvist Liljedahl is a freelance photographer based in Skåne, Sweden. She has studied photography for 4,5 years total at the Viebäcks Photo School and the Fotoskolan Stockholm, and has worked with photography on and off since 2010. Today, Lisa is studying to become a gardener and has been combining her interest in plants with her interest in photography. 

Liljedahl is author of two books, Too much too young, Dokument Press (2014) and Också Österlen, A&O (2011).  Her exhibits include the Autumn Salon at Fotografiska Museum (2014), De fattiga och de rika at the Virserums Konsthall (2014), Stockholm – Drömmarnas stad at Galleri KG52 (2012) and People, Places, Faces at the Arbetets Museum (2010).  She has received grants from the Swedish Authors’ Fund and the Längmanska Cultural Foundation.

www.lisalindqvist.se