Vanessa R Thompson

Vanessa R Thompson’s latest photography series, “The Spoils,” explores foods that are associated with comfort and nourishment gone past their edible point. She delves into the deep, organic energy of the natural world: textures, smells, deaths. What comes from the earth comes back to the earth. In the end, we become what we consume.

Her inspiration for this series comes from her introduction to the worker rights movement of late 1990s combined with a complicated personal relationship with food. This leads her to explore the rot within the food production life cycle: exploitative labor practices, unsafe working conditions in food production facilities, and inhumane conditions in farm and field.

If we look away from the rot and only focus on what is presented on our plate for consumption, we look away from the process that brings each plate of food to the table, and how that consumes us. Vanessa R Thompson’s work is an invitation to sit for a while with the spoiled results of our food production system.

Vanessa R Thompson is an analog photographer. She never listened when her mother she told her to stop playing with her food. She grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut on a diet of 1980s horror films and feminism, seasoned with a dash of disordered eating and splash of punk. Working out of Salem, MA, she uses items of consumable comfort; food, ephemera, toys, in her analog photographs that range from abstractions to absurdities.

Thompson received an MFA from Lesley University of Boston, MA, where she studied under Carrie Moyer and Julia Scher. Her work has been shown at NYC's Governors island art fair, Bait/Switch magazine, as part of the analog forever, and she is member of Salem art association, Cambridge art association She uses a collection of film cameras in her home studio populated by an army of creepy dolls, and cranky black cat.