Several years ago when I was working on my thesis (designing a Candy Museum…yep, that’s right) I came across an artist whose images of candy are among my most coveted objects to this day.
Animals I, Craig Kanarick
Craig Kanarick’s photographs are stunning. I don’t know what else to say about them. The way that he captures candy standing alone against a brightly lit, stark white background allows its inherent beauty to shine. Craig has a candy collection that I am truly envious of, and he is supremely skilled at organizing, categorizing, and assembling unique arrangements of sugar on the ‘canvas.’ I find myself looking through these compositions and remembering the first time I tried a hard as opposed to soft gummi bear, or the way I used to love red raspberry gumdrops. I can actually feel the way that the sugar comes off of the sliced fruit candies and makes the smooth waxy surfaces of all the other candies sticky in the little plastic bag from the bulk bins. I compare these candies with the unique ones I’ve found — which I thought were a lot — and I am humbled.
Some images in this series are a single color, whereas others feature a rainbow of shapes, sizes, opacities and visual flavors. Each print is pretty large, ranging from about a two foot to three foot rectangle or square, and they seem to still be for sale after all these years (lucky you!).
See for yourself some of these lovely, captivating portraits of candy. To see all of the prints in this series, you can visit his website here.
Big Rounds I, Craig Kanarick
Red Candies I, Craig Kanarick
Purple Candies I, Craig Kanarick
It appears to me that the background for these images is a light box, but I can’t say that with certainty. I also suspect there is some digital manipulation going on, due to the seemingly impossible size of some of the candies in relation to others. See for example the Skittle in the green assortment; there is no way that it’s larger than all of the other candies. I’ve looked at these images dozens of times, and just recently noticed the huge distortion of the Skittle. It caught me off guard and I love that.
Green Candies I, Craig Kanarick
I hope you find these prints as fantastic and evocative as I do, and I hope to someday see more of them pop up. There’s always more candy to be documented!
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