Romulo Yanes, Whose Photographs Captured the Beauty of Food, Dies at 62

“Is the napkin OK? Should it be bigger?” an associate art director asked him.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said.

Chopped cilantro was rushed to the scene to decorate the shot.

“You might want a whole piece of cilantro somewhere,” he directed. “Now it looks a little too choppy-chop.”

In 2017, Susan Bright’s “Feast for the Eyes: The Story of Food in Photography,” published by Aperture, placed Mr. Yanes’s contributions to food photography in historical context.

“Yanes’s photographs are highly attentive to textures in the food and have a sense of suspense — the food is about to be eaten or is in process: A piece is missing from the cake, the food’s in the pan, or a fork’s on the plate,” Ms. Bright wrote. “Everything looks delicious, but not out of reach, with a realism that taps into the eyes, mouth, brain and stomach.”

“With Yanes’s photographs,” she continued, “we can consume the food with our eyes and be completely satiated.”

Romulo Abraham Yanes was born on Feb. 17, 1959, in Fomento, Cuba. His father, Abraham, was an auto mechanic. His mother, Caridad (Nieblas) Yanes, was a seamstress.

When Romulo was 8 his family left Cuba through the Freedom Flights, an airlift initiative that brought Cubans to the United States, and they eventually settled in Weehawken, N.J. He spent his adult life trying to replicate his mother’s ropa vieja and flan recipes.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/dining/romulo-yanes-dead.html