ICP Teen Academy

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Charlotte Hillam-Kanada



This project marks a point in my journey where I threw out my ideas about what kinds of photographs I had to create. Through experimentation, what I saw was mysterious, beautiful, and disgusting, and I could not get enough. 

Through photographing food at its most beautiful and most revolting, my captivating rendition will make my viewers curious about the subject—disgusted and enthralled by food’s sensual, and sometimes amorous, nature.

Going past the surface, I used a macro lens and a microscope to bring out aspects of food from the inside out—from the colors of an oyster and ice that looks like fungi, to the consistency of the inside of a fish and the microscopic colors that can be found atop a blueberry. We live in a time characterized by a seemingly insatiable desire for photographic self-representation and while creating my work, it was impossible not to draw a resemblance between food and human nature.

If in the beginning of creating an idea for my personal vision project one was to ask me: What does being a photographic artist mean to you? I would reply: In my opinion, being an artist means attempting to push the limits of yourself through your art. If you were to ask me that question now, I would add that art is not just what you see or do, but what you make of it.

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Charlotte Hillam-Kanada is a New York City-based photographer who is captivated by photography. Charlotte has taken classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the International Center of Photography for the past three years, where she focused heavily on darkroom material until the lively nature of digital photography offered her a colorful new focus. Charlotte is currently a student in ICP’s Teen Academy Imagemakers program. She has found inspiration within the community at ICP and the flamboyant city around her. Charlotte's work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as a Scholastic Awards Gold Key winner. Through her study abroad in Rome, and her internship at Interview Magazine, she continues to be inspired by new opportunities and experiences, and how they influence her art. In the future, Charlotte will pursue Photography and Visual Media at Pratt Institute.