AT A GLANCE
- Known for
- Food and culture stories for Saveur and National Geographic
- Works in
- Color
- Camera
- Not documented; she likes to work with the light that is already there
- Also
- Senior contributing photographer for Saveur since 2006; host of the podcast Depth of Field
- Start with
- Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2014)
- Links
Penny De Los Santos is a Mexican-American photographer and director based in New York City. She trained for the first ten years of her career with National Geographic, and since 2006 she has been a senior contributing photographer for Saveur. Her pictures show food through the people, places and cultures around it.
The story
The call came from an editor at Saveur. It was a food story during Ramadan, the access was limited, and she had to leave at once. There would be just one meal to photograph. Penny De Los Santos flew thousands of miles to Beirut. There she met eight Iraqi refugees who had fled the war in their country. They got together to cook the dishes their mothers had taught them. Being seen with a Western journalist could put them in danger, so she worked only inside their apartment. A flash was out of the question. Watchmen on the rooftops looked for anything suspicious.
At sunset the men laid trash bags on the floor as a cloth for the meal. She climbed on a small stool, ready to shoot. Then the electricity went out across the whole area. “This is it, I'm done,” she thought. But in the corner, some of the men started to light candles around the food. With a slow shutter speed, she made the picture. It was “more intimate and beautiful than I could have ever anticipated,” she told The Splendid Table in 2012.
Culture had always been her subject. Born in Germany to an American military family, she grew up in a small town in Texas, with generations of family history on the Texas-Mexico border. She studied journalism at Texas A&M University and visual communication at Ohio University. For seven years she photographed Latino life in the United States, and the work ran in National Geographic in 2006. So when food became her main subject, she did not start with the plate. Her stories begin in the market, where people from all walks of life come together. “I photograph what is happening around food,” she said at a talk in 2015.
Since then she has worked in more than 40 countries, for magazines, cookbooks and brands. In 2023 she started a podcast about photography, Depth of Field.
In Beirut, after the picture, she sat down and ate with the men. As a woman, a Westerner and a journalist, she could not have joined that table in any other way. They did not speak the same language. Yet food gave them one. “I think it's the one language we can all sort of celebrate,” she said.
The work
- 1996Earns a master’s degree at Ohio University
- 1998Named College Photographer of the Year by the NPPA
- 2000Selected for the World Press Master Class in Amsterdam
- 2002Returns to Texas after four years at the San Jose Mercury News
- 2006Her story on Latino life in the US runs in National Geographic
- 2007Shows The Tejano Project at Texas A&M International University
- 2009Photographs Andrea Nguyen’s Asian Dumplings
- 2014Photographs Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts
- 2023Starts the podcast Depth of Field
Lessons
Start in the market. She begins her stories in the market. People from all walks of life go there, and it is full of leads.
Use the light you have. In Beirut a power cut could have ended the job. Candles and a slow shutter speed turned it into the picture.
Look around the plate. She looks for fire, smoke, light, hands and faces, not only the dish itself.
Try this: photograph a meal being cooked at home or at a market stall, without flash. Use only the light in the room, and keep the hands and faces of the cooks in the frame.
Gear
Available light: in Beirut she shot everything in the light that was there, because a flash could have exposed the men. She used a slow shutter speed for the candlelit meal.
For the Asian Dumplings cookbook shoot, Andrea Nguyen wrote that she moved the shooting table around the house to follow the natural light, working fast before it faded in the afternoon.
We found no reliable source that names her camera or lenses.
Books
Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2014). A 255-page cookbook by the Greek food writer Aglaia Kremezi, edited by Leslie Stoker, with color photographs by Penny De Los Santos. It has 150 meat-free recipes from around the Mediterranean: meze and salads, soups, main dishes, breads and biscotti, desserts, jams and drinks. Dishes include a meatless moussaka and quince stuffed with wheat berries, nuts and raisins. Good for cooks who eat meat too, and for photographers who want to see how she handles color and texture on the table.
Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More (Ten Speed Press, 2009). Written by Andrea Nguyen and photographed by Penny De Los Santos, who flew in for a four-day shoot in a friend’s home. The 240-page hardcover has 75 recipes from across East, Southeast and South Asia, grouped by type of dough or wrapper, plus guides to equipment, ingredients, shaping and cooking. It has 75 color photographs and line drawings that show how to fold the dumplings. A practical book for home cooks.
Richard Sandoval's New Latin Flavors: Hot Dishes, Cool Drinks (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2014). The restaurant chef Richard Sandoval adapts his dishes for home cooks, with more than 125 recipes. There are quesadillas, ceviches, arepas and enchiladas, salsas and guacamoles, and a bar chapter with cocktails made from Latin spirits. Recipe titles are in English and Spanish. The 224-page hardcover is photographed by Penny De Los Santos. For readers who love Latin American food and lively, colorful pictures.
