Bread and blanket

Friday Fragment #4

Just over three years ago, I received an email from a man called George who owned a bakery and employed a team of people whose photographic skills he was keen to enhance. I was used to receiving such messages – I’d been running workshops to teach phone photography for several years. The timing, however, did make it a little unexpected: the country was into its third national Covid lockdown and public gatherings still gave cause for private jitters. George’s business, like so many during that unprecedentedly difficult year, had been on the brink of closure. Six or so months prior to contacting me, George had posted a picture to his website which resulted later that day in the online sale of a loaf of bread. The next days brought more and more sales. George had ‘pivoted’ his business. Within a few months, customers were queuing round the block. Six or seven weeks after receiving George’s initial email, I arrived in Leamington Spa to run a workshop for him and his team. Afterwards, I stayed on to take a few photos utilising a tray I’d found on the runners of a trolley in the front room of the bakery. On the shelf alongside lay a pile of aged ochre- and sienna-stained thick linen blankets. I opened one out into the window space. This blanket or couche had been used in the bakery for years, purposed for holding baguette dough in shape while it proved overnight. I placed one of the blackened-crust boules on top, pushed a fold of the fabric into it’s underside and took a photo on my phone. The light threw deep heavy shadows into the furrows and along the frayed edges of the linen. I was smitten. George couldn’t quite believe that I’d fallen for such an old and banal piece of fabric. But nor could he quite comprehend how good his sourdough, focaccia and croissants looked when laid upon the very material that he’d been using to wrap and shape his dough with every day for each of the last few years. As I left, George handed me a carrier bag containing a few cakes and pastries and then another containing the battered metal tray and the beautiful brown couche – still to this day the nicest ‘food’ doggy bag I’ve ever received. Three years on and the couche is still the prop I turn to first and most often when photographing food. I think back to George and his bread each time I do. I remember that first public event following the global pandemic that so dramatically changed life for so many of us. I remember the weight of the light that came through the glass of his bakery window that afternoon. I remember the happiness of a day’s work done well and the kindness of such a simple gesture at a time when worry and uncertainty had shaped and rigidified so many of us, like the flaxen fibres of that impliable dough-stained linen blanket.

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