The Earl Of Sandwich
That this photo exists in this day and age is a mystery. A shop that hopes you will spend money to eat within its walls tries to entice you with a cheese sandwich on white bread. To be fair the lettuce looks fresh and the fairness ends there. I have the muscle memory of me trying to power down a dry cheese sandwich in the dark of my kitchen after a night out when I had nothing to eat.
This is a photo of a small businessman with low self esteem. It’s like a headshot where the actor didn’t re-book the shoot and has a black eye in the photo. This is a pre-Photoshop hypothetical. Maybe this shot is pre-Photoshop. Today they could photoshop some char marks from a toaster, some turkey hanging over the edge of the bread, maybe a healthy looking pickle across the bottom. Or they could have made an edible sandwich from their menu and taken a decent picture of it. The problem starts on the prep-board. How ’bout the choice of bread?
In fashion, the choices an art director makes affects the finished product. On the set of this shoot no one mentioned a Kaiser roll? Onion Bagel? Focaccia? Multi-Grain? A freakin’ Pita pocket? No. They stood around the table after a guy with a dirty apron, looking like Paulie from Rocky, plunked down the sandwich and said, “There. Now take the picture and bring it to Kinko’s and get back to work, I’m not paying you to play Picasso.”
Sometimes the style over substance ethos is a good thing. The knock on shallow people is that they worry too much about outward appearances, what’s the opposite of that, being deep or looking like you don’t give a shit? Having no style is a cheese sandwich.
