Anthony Denney and Elizabeth David

Food photography .... a grumbling post but plenty of pictures !

“There is, I think, only one first-edition Elizabeth David that has a photograph on the front cover – and I can honestly say it is one of the worst food photos that ever existed. Look it up!” 

I read this comment online and fumed gently as I think it is unfair. So I write today to help me try to sort my own thoughts about the relative usefulness of words and pictures in books about food and cookery. I also would like to introduce you to the work of Anthony Denney, no mean photographer, I think.

This is a quick snap of my own copy, cover photograph taken by Anthony Denney at the Hôtel du Midi, Lamastre. First published in 1960, a hardback of over 500 pages including extensive bibliography and index, it has an occasional line drawing illustration by Juliet Renny. I wonder if this would be approved for a publishing deal these days?

So who was Anthony Denney who was able to lunch with Elizabeth and collaborate with such a famously exacting writer?

Born in Norfolk in 1913, he studied at the Ipswich School of Art, the Painting School of the Royal College of Art, and then gained teaching qualifications at the Courtauld Institute and at Goldsmith’s College in 1938. Soon he was lecturing on the history of costume and textile printing at Kingston School of Art and his first photographic work appeared in Queen Magazine. His wartime service was working as an Intelligence Officer in India and it was from there that he was recruited by Audrey Withers, editor of Vogue, who apparently traced him after having seen and admired his work in a book.

In his own CV he wrote:

After the war, from 1947 I was working continuously as Staff Photographer for Conde Nast Inc., my work appearing constantly in Vogue, House and Garden, Vogue Export Book, Vogue Beauty Book, Maison et Jardin, etc., in London, Paris and New York, until 1964 (approx). I was also Decoration Editor for Vogue Magazine during my last few years with Conde Nast.

At the same time I owned a decoration business, Fairfax Decorations Ltd., Curzon Street, W.1., which was principally concerned with the interior decoration of luxury steam yachts as well as private houses.

Simultaneously, I was working for Messers J. Walter Thompson, doing photography and decor for publicity, exhibitions, cine and television. ( Everything appearing for G-Plan publicity at that time was my work).

Since the 1950’s I have also been associated with Elizabeth David CBE:- designing the original decor and subsequent window displays (until 1969) of Elizabeth David Ltd, Bourne Street, S.W,1; all the photographic covers for Mrs. David’s books are also my own work; as well as many other photographic illustrations of her articles in Vogue, Food and Wine Magazine, Queen magazine, Nova magazine, Gourmet magazine, etc.

He goes on to mention his work with the Tate Gallery, his collection and expertise in contemporary art. From 1964, he was a tenant of the National Trust at Rainham Hall in Essex, which he furnished and used as a location for many of his fashion shoots. He moved to Spain in 1969, with his second wife who he met in Elizabeth’s shop, and died there in 1990.

These bare facts do not due justice to his story. The exhibition held at Rainham Hall back in 2019 heralded him as ‘ an icon of 20th century style.’ He divorced first his wife in 1950 and for some years lived the precarious life that was the fate of homosexual men in those days. He mixed extensively in London society. The young Anthony Armstrong-Jones, later Lord Snowden was his photographic assistant and he decorated a yacht for Aristotle Onassis. He also amassed a large and valuable collection of modern art.

He and his partner, Alex, travelled through France with Elizabeth on her research trips and this presumably is where that cover photograph was taken. I clearly remember gazing at the image when I bought the book as a schoolgirl in 1967 and wishing I could be transported to some chic little bistro in the south of France ….

In 1956, Audrey Withers persuaded Elizabeth to leave Harpers and to write a regular column in Vogue to feature the best seasonal produce each month. Elizabeth was resistant to the idea of pictures.

You can’t do colour pictures of food. I think they are bloody awful.

It was when she and Anthony Denney agreed that her food would look best when freshly prepared in her Halsey Street flat that she relented and their working relationship first began to flourish.

Anthony wrote:

My experience as a painter has facilitated … my approach to colour photography : the creation of still life groups, the selection of the exciting aspect of any composition and, above all, the conception of every picture purely in terms of colour.

This philosophy was miles from the prevailing approach, exemplified in these illustrations from Good Housekeeping’s Picture Cookery in 1950.

Also in 1956, The Constance Spry Cookery Book, had 1235 pages, a handful of black and white photographs illustrating techniques and just one coloured frontispiece - a particularly baroque arrangement!

I can’t claim to understand the technology of colour printing and how it has evolved and improved over the years, nor the economics of the publishing industry. I do know that my favourite books, the ones to which I regularly refer when faced with the challenge of unfamiliar ingredients or a menu to plan are fat volumes, packed with recipes rather than pictures, and mostly in paperback. Elizabeth David, Anna del Conte, Marcella Hazan, Jane Grigson, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey and such like others have taught me to cook, gently holding my hand in the kitchen and introducing me to unfamiliar techniques and ingredients.

How many of the expensive, glossy, large format books that will fill the shelves and lure the Christmas shoppers will be in the charity shops months later with barely a gravy stain? I have loads myself and can while away many a wet afternoon enjoying the evocative writing about distant lands but perhaps only ever cook one recipe. I am an avid collector of such treasures and, luckily, there is still just enough space in my house to store them all. Yes, cookery books have always been partly aspirational but let’s treasure those that are truly useful and affordable too.

I hear it argued that our habits are increasingly driven by our involvement with social media, a visual culture all too easily prey to fads and hacks. It is said that a colour photograph is an essential adjunct to a recipe. If this is the position of editors and publishers who also insist that recipe writers persist with the myth that onions can be cooked properly in 5 minutes it worries me. Cooking well is an important life skill and confidence is all too easily lost. Ingredients vary, ovens are temperamental. Writers of good recipes hold your hand and take time to explain the variables and encourage you to use all your senses and not just the timer on your phone.

The crisis in our national diet that is driving obesity and ill health, the ubiquity of plastic boxed, ultra processed food must surely make us wonder about how effective is the cook book industry in helping the nation to cook. In 2023 there were 8.4 million people living alone in the UK. Half of those are 65 and over. A further 7.96 million households are comprised of a couple with no children. I live alone, love to cook daily and am fortunate in having many years of experience in the kitchen so I can navigate the challenges of scaling down recipes that feed 4-6 (and my freezer still groans with the leftovers!). The food we waste is a crime against humanity and our planet.

There are no easy answers to these dilemmas as so many families struggle to get a meal on the table at all given pressures on time and budgets. Perhaps those who influence our food culture through the many forms of media we consume need to be careful and mindful of the role they can play in helping real people to cook real food in the real world.

Paid subscribers can read on for a couple of recipes that need no pictures !