future generations
A doughnut with a beetle in the glaze. A hot dog with a stag beetle instead of a sausage. A strawberry tart, and something with six legs sitting on the fruit.
In 2021, the dried yellow mealworm became the first insect authorised as a novel food in the European Union. Insects have long been proposed as a more sustainable source of protein, requiring fewer resources than conventional livestock. But introducing a new food is not only a question of necessity. It must also be made desirable.
Future Generations imagines a near future in which humanity is forced to consume insects after exhausting the resources that sustained its previous diet. The new food is made tasty and irresistible through the familiar seductions of sugar, colour, and advertising: glazed, sprinkled, arranged on pastel plates and photographed like commercial food imagery.
Burns photographs insects as the food industry might one day photograph them, because appetite is not only biological: it is manufactured through images.
Future Generations is not simply a warning about what we may have to eat. It is what that future will look like once necessity has been packaged, sweetened, and marketed back to us.
Fast Food, 2018
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Happy Meal, 2018
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Sunday Desserts, 2018
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Tea Time, 2018
Digital Loop
Digital Loop
Future Generations, 2018
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Sugar and Proteins, 2019
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
The Perfect Dessert, 2018
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Tea Time, 2018
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Sunday Desserts II, 2018
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Kaleido Bugs, 2018
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl
Photograph, archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl