Gourmet Magazine & Irving Penn: The Death (and Rebirth) of an Era

The timing for the launch of "The Modern Gastronomer" seems appropriate. The last week has seen the passing of two legends, each emblematic of an era. Both associated with the sensibility of a different time and consciousness that seems to be either gone or irreversibly on its way out. A time with more depth and substance; slower, well-crafted, more thoughtful and intelligent. Both Gourmet Magazine and Irving Penn embodied these qualities. And so, along with seemingly everyone else I know, I am saddened and disheartened to see them go.




But with this loss comes a sense of purpose and hope for the future. I am reminded that no matter how many millions of links, comments or sound bites are being twittered across the internet every second, that real substance, content, inspiration, originality and passion have no substitutes. These are the things that keep us creating and keep us moving forward. Without that kind of real substance, all those mindless links, sound bites and comments are simply vultures circling their own dead.

I know I'm not alone in this feeling. Among friends and co-workers, many in the photography, food and publishing worlds, there is a feeling barely under the surface that something has to give. We cannot continue along the path of faster, easier, and dumber forever. The modern internet certainly has been democratizing, opening a whole new world of possibilities (and millions of opinions), but at what cost? Have we lost our taste for the real thing?

I, for one, would like to view the passing of Gourmet and Mr. Penn as not the death of an era, but a wake-up call; one to usher in a new era of substance and thought amidst a sea of fluff. This week, Chris Kimball's piece in the New York Times addressed this phenomenon, and urged those who feel the same to "swim against the tide, better define our brands, prove our worth, ask to be paid for what we do, and refuse to climb aboard this ship of fools..." Hopefully, for all of us who feel the same, we can take on (or re-emphasize) a sense of pride and purpose in our works - placing our emphasis on quality and craft over speed and volume, and thoughfulness over timeliness, regardless of the medium we choose to deliver our work in.