A stylist's job is often described as making food beautiful. June Park disagrees. "You cannot make food beautiful," she says. "You can only stop making it less beautiful. Most of this job is removing things."
Her kit bag contains tweezers, scissors, a pocket of toothpicks, and a roll of black tape for the windows. The tape is the most important tool. Half of styling is subtraction; the other half is deciding where the light is allowed to fall.
This essay collects her notes from a week of shoots — on the honesty of a scuffed pan, the arrogance of a perfect leaf, and why the best plates are the ones that look like they have already been loved.
A plate that looks untouched has usually been touched too much.
This story appears in No. 07 of Plate Note, from the studio section.