YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT?

fridge If you think your office fridge is haunting, check out this gallery of pictures on Good magazine's website. Entitled "You are What You Eat", it's a photo series by Mark Menjivar that documents the contents of other people's refrigerators. "And if the aphorism holds true—if we really are what we eat—then refrigerators are like windows into our souls," Good suggests.

I wouldn't go that far, but the photos are immensely striking. Positioned in front of an open fridge, we find within a life in full. These views are often awkwardly intimate, with the grimy, yellowed-tooth colour of a fridge setting off its contents.

Whether we are looking at a hacked-up buck, glowing red in a freezer next to a bottle of tequila ("Carpenter/Photographer | San Antonio, TX | 3-Person Household | 12-Point Buck | 2008"), a lone jar of organic mayonnaise next to a black plastic bag on vacant shelves ("Street Advertiser | San Antonio, TX | 1-Person Household | Lives on $432 fixed monthly income | 2007"), or an impeccable medley of citrus, beer and yogurt ("Community Volunteer | San Angelo, TX | 1-Person Household | Completely blind and lives alone. | 2007"), the effect is compellingly voyeuristic, a mix of banality with bright spots of difference. (Keep your eye out for the frozen rattlesnake.) One wonders if shopping lists, medicine cabinets or glove compartments would be so revealing.

These photographs will also be on view at Ampersand in Portland come September

~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

Picture credit: stu_spivack (via Flickr)