IACP 2023 Awards

Last night was the 2023 IACP Food Photography Awards in New York where I was awarded the Editorial Food Photographer of 2023 for a series I shot with SaintCavish and Serious Eats in the Zhen San Huan hand hammered wok factory in Shandong, China.

As much as I wish I could have been there, hanging out in Northern China during wine harvest will have to do!

Thank you to the International Association of Culinary Professionals for this incredible acknowledgment, excellent encouragement to keep pushing forward and capturing more stories.

To see more of the stories I’ve worked on recently, check out the stories tab.

Graeme KennedyOctober 1, 2023

Chinese wines - a quick tour of some of Ningxia's most interesting vineyards

I've been asked a few times where is good to visit in Ningxia, sadly wine tourism in that area isn't as structured as you might expect in a place like Napa Valley which the region often compares itself too - there are a handful of wineries that are open to the public or easily bookable (like Xige, Kanaan, Yuanshi or Silver Heights) and certainly worth a visit, but here is my list from my most recent trip up there:

Silver Heights - Easy to book a tour, these guys are a big name in Ningxia, an excellent Winery, a seriously yummy orange wine and a cider too! Silver Heights was the first wine I had in China where I thought 'wait, China can make a damn good wine, I have to pay attention to this'. Recently certified bio dynamic, lots of natural fun, and a gorgeous space to visit.

Domaine Des Aromes - this has been a favourite of mine for ages, not just because of the amazing cellar experience, but also their amazing biodynamic vineyard that produces an amazing Cab Sav. It's been a favourite of mine for a while.

Xiaopu Wine - Ian Dai is a real cowboy wine maker, he's got about a million experiments on the go, of course his classic 'Gathering' that I posted on Saturday is an amazing wine, great value, but he also is out there in Ningxia blending wine with beer and mead. It's mental and delicious as hell.

Petit Mont - like Xiaopu, they are making wine by buying grapes from other vineyards, meaning they make an exciting range of wines at a great price, with more classic flavour blends.

Stone + Moon - a new winery on the block, driven by the incredible wine maker Maria Teresa Romero Ponce these guys are dropping an amazing Marselan Rose and an amazing Syrah this year!

Xige - they are one of the biggest of the interesting wineries out in Ningxia, they make a good Merlot - a grape variety that really should be grown more out in Ningxia. I did a big project for Xige previously, check that out here.

Devo - this is an exciting new winery in Ningxia, relentlessly chasing the classic Champagne flavour, and nailing it, they also have a super yummy rose on it's way with huge strawberry notes.

Legacy Peak - A more established vineyard, they've been around since the 90s, some good, classic Ningxia reds, and we got absolutely wrecked with the son of the founder over an amazing lamb hotpot. Pretty good Cab Sav.

Graeme KennedySeptember 9, 2023

Tequila Shots

It's a shame that Tequila is too often related to drunken party shots, a rim of salt, a bit of lime and a rough morning of regrets to wake up to, in reality, Tequila is a delicious slice of the incredibly diverse Agave Spirits pie.

Broadly, alcohol made from an agave plant, anywhere in the world is an Agave Spirit, this is the umbrella term, Mezcal and Tequila are domination of origin terms - put simply, names that can only be used if they come from specific Mexican States and follow specific processes... think Champagne vs Sparkling wine.

In the case of Tequila, it can only come from a handful of Mexican states, and made from the blue agave plant. These enormous (and surprisingly sharp) plants grow 8 years before they can be harvested, we really don't make any other alcohol out of something that grows for that long, think bourbon or whiskey that uses corn or wheat that was planted that year, sugar cane for rum grows for about 12 months, even grapes - although they are on old vines, the grapes themselves grow over a single season... so why does that matter? Over those 8 years, the agave plant is soaking up flavours from the soil, the environment around it, the rain and sun, by the time it's harvested it has an amazing story to tell of that region, it truly spends years just soaking up the terroir.

However, there is a lot of room to play when it comes to Tequila, and not all of it is good - for example, the traditional way of making tequila is to cut out the Pina of the agave plant (that pineapple looking core), slow roast it in an oven, squeeze the sugary juice out of it, ferment that, then distill it into what we know as Tequila; however, there is a short cut for the roasting part which involves soaking your agave in chemicals, wildly more efficient, unfortunately, it means the resulting tequila is full of hydrochloric acid, not fun. Also, a tequila legally only needs to be 51% agave spirit, meaning whatever other alcohol you have laying around you can use to top off your tequila and you can still call it tequila (because growing a blue agave plant for 8 years before you harvest is expensive). As you can imagine the big brands out there, including a lot of the new celebrity tequilas are using loopholes like this to keep costs down - no wonder you can get a bad headache from a night on Tequila. Another good reason to find and support small businesses and celebrate traditional craft!

There is a lot more to the world of Agave Spirits than Patron and Don Julio, and the good stuff only happens if you dive in. If you are into wine tastings, have a Mezcal or Agave Spirit tasting you might be amazed at what you find.

Graeme KennedyJanuary 26, 2023Tequila, Mexico, photojournalism, blue agave, Jalisco, Harvest

An unexpected return home

After a failed attempt to return back to China, I arrived slightly unplanned in my hometown of Jasper, Canada a couple days ago, just in time for our first big snowfall of the year. Was great to get out and see the sights with that fresh dusting. I spent 18 years growing up here, but I think this was my first time photographing elk; as a kid we would just ignore them or avoid them depending on the time of year, and fortunately for me, this is the time of year where they are pretty calm, conserving energy for the long cold winter.

Whenever people ask what it's like growing up in a National Park in the Canadian rockies, I tell them that my version of 'traffic' was trying to walk to school in knee deep snow and being stuck behind a herd of elk and having to wait for the wardens to arrive and chase them out of town with hockey sticks. Real Canadian. Completely true story.

Graeme KennedyNovember 8, 2022

If there is anything I wish I could impress upon you, it's just how wildly inexpensive a chocolate bar is.

All the years farmers wait for their trees to mature, the labour to maintain and harvest at just the right time, breaking the pods open one by one, carrying cacao for hours to a buying point, the careful fermentation process, the rugged kilometres it's driven from there, then the thousands more it rocks back and forth on an ocean freighter, all before it even arrives at the doors of a chocolate factory where a lineup of incredibly sophisticated machines slowly breaks the cacao down and massages it into chocolate.

That's when we come along, at the checkout somewhere, jamming a hand into our pockets and slamming a couple bucks on the counter to purchase the anticlimactic summarization of all of this incredible globalised labour.

Chocolate is wildly underpriced, and in almost every case, it's at the expense of the farmer. The mere fact that it takes industry disruptors like Kokoa Kamili or Latitude Trade to come into a market swinging, paying well over double what the going rate is for cacao, just for farmers to be able to afford to send all their kids to high-school is a great example of this. Farmers are getting older, in areas that grow cacao for mass produced chocolate, it's simply not a very desirable crop, younger generations are finding other careers and cacao farmers are in their fifties in places where life expectancies sit around 60.

This industry is broken, and there is a surprisingly short answer when I asked Julia Zotter (from Zotter Chocolate) how chocolate makers can make it better: pay farmers more. Or, for a consumer like you and me, buy chocolate from someone paying farmers more.

Graeme KennedySeptember 20, 2022craft chocolate, photo journalism, Cacao, bean to bar

Shanghai Lockdown's Second day of citywide testing (Puxi)

The second round of Shanghai, Puxi's city wide COVID tests kicked off early this morning, a day late, but with the aim of testing all of the east half of the city. Millions of covid tests. 加油.

Graeme KennedyApril 4, 2022

Chinese New Year and the Corona Virus

There is a lot of buzz on the news about this strange new #coronavirus that has been spreading quickly throughout China and is now jumping borders - as of yesterday, even Canada may be seeing its first case. However, despite it being the centre of most conversations I've had over the past week, this post isn't about that, but rather, what is happening right now in China that makes all this so much more complicated. ⁠

Over the last 50 years, the story of Chinese cities has been incredible, springing up and expanding at an unbelievable pace as young people move away from village life and search for jobs in new industries. As this has happened their parents, many who are now grandparents will often stay put, leading to what is now the world's largest human migration as these young families venture back to spend New Years together. ⁠

So what does this mean for this new coronavirus we are seeing? The danger now is when everyone begins returning to city centres, offices, schools, metro systems. At the moment Shanghai is a ghost town, as most of the population are people who have moved there from elsewhere in China. The government is beginning to pre-emptively shut schools and malls in order to ease the effects of the cities residence returning, as well as closing off travel to huge areas of the country where the virus is widespread. ⁠

Graeme KennedyFebruary 16, 2020

The Fruit

So this what it’s all about. This is where your chocolate bar begins. It’s a fruit with a thick, almost pumpkin like exterior and a core of flesh covered seeds which, after harvesting, fermentation, drying, shipping, roasting, grinding down and mixing with cacao butter and milk and/or sugar and other fancy processing, it becomes the chocolate bar you know and love.

Guatemala, with its range of climates, is home to a wide variety of high quality cacao, usually with a loveable nutty flavour, chocolate from this region is one sought after by craft chocolate makers. Some of the plantations we’ve visited were planted 200 years ago, passed down through Mayan generations, today these heirlooms plantations are a big interest to those, like Zotter, who are seeking fine cacao flavours.

Graeme KennedyJune 8, 2019

Getting There

After a fantastic layover in Vancouver, seeing friends and family, picking up a new passport and enjoying some great meals, I’m taking off tomorrow morning to Guatemala with my friend Julia Zotter to capture another chocolate sourcing trip for Zotter Schokoladen (www.zotter.at). This time last year we were heading further south to Peru for the month where we checked in on dozens of cacao plantations across the country. One of the things that struck me from the last trip was just how far and how long getting to plantations took, at one point driving three days to get to one farmer. It made me realise how much of a factor distance is when it comes to products like chocolate, how far a bean has to travel before it gets to our mouths... or even just the port that will bring it to the Zotter factory in Austria, then onto wherever your mouth happens to be. Seeing this, combined with how hard and tough conditions are for many farmers, it made me realise how ridiculously under priced a product like chocolate actually is.

A $1 bar of chocolate is, simply put, a joke.

Organisations like the Fairtrade Foundation push producers to price fairly and the money flows back to communities that farm it, and Zotter goes even further to connect directly with cooperatives and farmers, but even knowing that, it wasn’t until I actually took the time to retrace the steps of my favourite chocolate bar that I realised how vast this system is, and how much impact can be made when you chose to purchase a more reasonably priced piece of chocolate.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting on Instagram about what I come across, hunting for cacao with Julia in Guatemala and Belize - find me at www.instagram.com/GraemeDYK

Graeme KennedyJune 1, 2019

Crumbling Bagan

Bagan; if you haven’t been there, you know someone who has, it’s quickly becoming a major stop on any South East Asian tour. Once the heart of the Pagan Kingdom in the 11th-13th centuries, the wealthy capital built 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries. The fall of the Kingdom at the hands of repeated Mongol invasions reduced the city to a small town, with a surrounding landscape dotted with these crumbling monuments.

Today, their Archaeological Area is undergoing a controversial UNESCO World Heritage application due to the poor management and restoration attempts, but as tourists pouring in from all over the world that lack of resources to manage and restore the monuments has also led to continual damage as visitors carelessly scramble up the crumbling pagodas. Myanmar's economy has incredible potential - rich in oil, gas, minerals and of course cultural history, it is trying to push forward from its history of military corruption that held it back for so long. So what is the future of Bagan? Will it manage to use its economic growth and save this historic area from even more damage, or will the flood of tourists, eager to watch the famous sunsets and sunrises be the next destroying force this ancient wonder.

Graeme KennedyMarch 2, 2019

Wealthy villages

Trekking through Central Myanmar, you tend to pass through different tribal areas, different dialects, cultures, lifestyles, wardrobe choices, like most of Asia, political borders don't always do a great job of representing the incredible diversity of people who have been establishing themselves there over the past hundreds, and in some cases thousands of years.

One interesting aspect I've been fascinated with recently is wealth across these areas, Shan State (and many others) is going through a lot of change as Myanmar's economy has been rapidly growing over the past decade, with a large chunk of the counties industry being agriculture, farming villages are learning that their extra work is paying off. There are a lot of new houses in these rural towns, and although to you and me, they still are far removed from our image of wealth, this Taung Tu Tribe's village in central Myanmar is a good example of what a more wealthy town in the area looks like.

Graeme KennedyFebruary 27, 2019Taung Tu Tribe, Myanmar, Shan State, Inle, Economy

Stinky Economies

In December, I attended perhaps one of my more memorable parties of 2018, and more or less by accident.

Satkargone, a small Danu Tribe village, like many villages in Shan State grows rice, but they have also carved a niche out for themselves in the region growing flowers, and after the rice harvest, Garlic.

I arrived in Satkargone just after the rice harvest finished, and to get ready to plant their garlic, the young people in town would get together in the evenings around a fire to peel last year's garlic to put the cloves in the ground the following morning.

As any evening around a fire is, the conversation was carefree, a small handheld TV played Looney Tunes clips, the ground was covered in garlic stems and peels, and man, could these kids peel garlic. The town has been growing garlic for generations, beyond memory, their garlic is smaller, but a richer more fragrant flavour. The valleys around the town have been trying to replicate and grow their garlic strain for years but never seem to get the same result, leaving the Danu farmers in Satkargone a nice market… until recently.

Chinese grown garlic from a few hundred kilometres north is less fragrant but far larger, and often sells for cheaper as more of China's farms industrialise. In recent years it's been harder for these farmers to sell their products in markets next to this new competitor.

Ever since I've moved to Shanghai, my trips abroad have often revealed similar stories to me, as the country becomes a bigger economic player, globalisation often has 'made in China’ stamped on the bottom. For better or for worse, even little untouched areas like Satkargone are feeling the effects of this, so who knows how many more of these garlic peeling parties will be left. Will China's increasing production strength drown their little industry as it so often does, or will their unique garlic find a place in the region’s growing taste for quality ingredients?

Graeme KennedyFebruary 25, 2019Garlic, Food, Myanmar, Shan State, Rural, Farming, Danu Tribe

Nike Globalism

So often when I travel to places like this, I long for that classic shot, one that’s filled with authenticity, culture, uniqueness. As a photographer, it used to bother me when a Nike swish or a pair of knock-off Adidas trousers wandered into the background of my photos. When I had my first experiences photographing hill tribes along the Thai-Myanmar border ten years ago, I remember shooting around all the Real Madrid and Manchester United jerseys that had made their way back to the tribes from some relative who had brought them back from their city life three days down the road.

Today, being back on the other side of that border, my mind has changed a bit. No matter where I’ve been, whether it’s Africa, Asia, Latin America, you name it, brands (or their replica ‘tributes’), have made their way into the wardrobes of all ages. Cloths are cloths. If they fit, they fit. This is one of the many subtle ways our incredible global economy has shown its face in these tucked away corners of our world. These moments are the authentic, sincere representation of life here, in this case, for the Danu Tribe.

Unfortunately, for this Danu village in central Myanmar, a global economy hasn’t been all good news and Nike Swishes for them… (Stay tuned…)

Graeme KennedyFebruary 23, 2019Myanmar, Nike, Globalism, Travel, Rural

Burning Coal

Living in China, you learn to appreciate blue sky days like this, however as the winter months kick in, and energy demand skyrockets, China's enormous array of coal plants step up a gear, sending pollution levels up too.

Well over half of China's energy needs are still supplied by coal, even though air pollution is a rising concern here, and although Beijing has been sending messages of sustainability out on the world stage, there is an estimated 700 new coal plants in planning, or being built by Chinese companies - with a fifth of those projects outside of China - this is nearly half of all new coal plants that will be built over the next decade.

In the past 5 years that I've lived in Shanghai, the government's effort to clean up the air has literally had a visible impact, but some believe that as the economy slows and China pulls the levers to keep the fire burning, air quality might fall down the list of importance, so perhaps the chimney peaking over the tops of these buildings will, unlike the ancient town it neighbours, not be a relic of history anytime soon.

Graeme KennedyFebruary 20, 2019coal, China, Energy, Deqing

Let's talk about chocolate.

Over the past year, I've had the pleasure of doing some work for Zotter, the Austrian Bean to Bar chocolate makers. Documenting their cooperatives in Peru, then following the cacao beans to their factory outside of Graz. Coming from small-town Canada, where my taste of chocolate was limited to whatever Dairy Milk bars were stocked in the convenience store, spending time with Julia Zotter has opened my eyes not just to the world of agriculture and chocolate making, but to the incredible potential of what chocolate is.

The world of wine has many parallels to chocolate, however, when buying a wine you make your choice based on the type of grape, the country and region it's from, and often the specific farm or estate it's been grown on, as well as the year it was produced. Unfortunately, unlike wine, chocolate is often an enormous mix of everything, companies like Hershey's or Mars will create a base chocolate from a mix of suppliers - so imagine for a moment that the wine you bought was just a massive blend of wine from thousands of farms, spread across dozens of countries, each year the flavour would hardly change, and the only way to make it unique would be to mix other flavours into it.

Cacao, like grapes, have a several different varieties with differing tastes (think Pinot vs Chardonnay), and are subject to climate in the same way (A French Chardonnay vs an Australian Chardonnay), even the specific estate conditions, vine age, and fermentation conditions (this is why wine tasting in wine regions feature so many different flavours of the same grape), and of course the year (perhaps 2014 was much sunnier in Bordeaux than 2015).

I remember sitting in cooperative collection centres across Peru tasting farm after farm of 100% cacao mass, each with completely different profiles. Unfortunately, all that uniqueness, those beautiful flavours, they are just lost in the blend of thousands that coat your Ferrero Rocher.

Zotter is set on elevating our relationship to chocolate, with their Labooko range you can sample your way through hundreds of different bars, each featuring specific regions, bean, or blend. Last week I pulled out two bars of chocolate, both 72%, both from Peru, but different genetics, and the flavours where night and day. Many craft chocolate makers around the world are moving in the direction, such as Canada's Hummingbird Chocolate which is just down the road from the Hershey's factory was in Peru the same time we were, exploring different regions and flavours.

It has been exciting (and delicious) discovering these new depths, and as the number of craft chocolate makers grow, it won't be long before you'll find yourself debating some connoisseur about whether 2020 was a better year than 2022 for Peruvian, Piuran, Chuncho beans.

Graeme KennedyFebruary 19, 2019chocolate, bean to bar, zotter, peru, craft chocolate, wine, wine and chocolate, Zotter Chocolate, Julia Zotter, Fairtrade

Shanghai's Original Foodie Community

This is the original foodie network of Shanghai, either hidden down an alley or behind a set of subtle doors, these Fresh markets are dotted along almost every road in the city. Early in the morning, they are bustling with Shanghai’s older generations collecting the food they need that day, greeting shop owners by name, having a few extra freebies tossed into their bags and haggling over a couple cents.

Everyone has their go-to stands where they would swap recipes, ask the shop keeper what things are, how to cook it, what goes well with something else. Until the ’90s, few homes in Shanghai had refrigerators, so the Fresh Market is where you started every day, it really is a ‘see you tomorrow’ type of establishment, a central part of any neighbourhood.

There is an obsession with food in China, with the local TV show 风味人间 (Once Upon a Bite) hitting a sizzling 600 million views for its first episode. Many young people are passionate about exploring food as well, queueing up for the new restaurant and constantly checking their social media to see where their friends are dining. However, if you visit one of these fresh markets today, it will be clear the impact that online shopping, restaurant culture, and delivery meals have made, as very few from the younger generation have adopted the age-old market routine.

The ‘foodie culture’ in Shanghai goes back generations, but with countless new restaurants, culinary events, TV shows and Social Media Influencers whetting modern appetites in Shanghai, what will happen to these original food communities in the city?

Graeme KennedyFebruary 17, 2019Food, Foodie, Community, Markets, Farmers Market, CHina, Chinese Food, Chinese Farming

The Jing-Hang Canal

Often when we think of the incredible historical wonders of China, the Great Wall comes to mind; the 21 000 km long northern border defence which started it’s construction as early as the 7th century BC, and still today cuts across China, snaking over countless ridges and mountaintops.

However, a lesser known, but staggeringly impressive feat began happening in 5th century BC, the Jing-Hang Canal, a 1776 km long, series of canals that connect Hangzhou (just south of Shanghai) to Beijing in the north. Featuring lock systems, connecting rivers, and supplying networks of waterways that serve entire cities (pictured above is the Ancient quarter of Deqing city) the waterway system was the lifeline of the country for centuries.

Although the system has been altered, expanded, reduced and changed over the past 2000 years, it is still an active waterway seeing ships moving freight up and down, and even with China’s rapid infrastructure expansion in rail and highways, it’s still possible to sail from Hangzhou, all the way to Beijing.

Graeme KennedyFebruary 14, 2019Jing-Hang, China, Canals, Great Wall of China, History

Baibiao recycled wood market

Fueled by the growth of more modern interior design in the area, ranging from the growing coffee shop and restaurant market to the rise of the Minsu (old farmhouse turned upscale Bed and Breakfast) the Baibiao recycled wood market has been expanding steadily over the last twenty years. Salvaging wood from abandoned or demolished towns and neighbourhoods, the 312 families working and in some cases living in the market sell it on to new projects. Beyond wood, the market is also a treasure trove of furniture and knick-knacks spanning decades if not centuries of Chinese history. The more than 300 warehouses span 266 000 sq metres making it the largest recycled wood markets in Zhejiang province.

Unfortunately, as many of these stories go, the industrial city of Deqing is quickly expanding, swallowing up the neighbouring rice fields, the Baibiao recycled wood market is set to be bulldozed next week so the land can be resold to developers, leaving the business owners scrambling to find storage and new locations for their businesses.

Wandering through the market was a stunning reminder of China’s history of exquisite craftsmanship. Almost everything you see is meticulously hand-carved; warehouse after warehouse of intricately widdled window shutters or doors serving as a reminder that for thousands of years the term ‘Made in China’ was not at all synonyms with ‘cheap’, but rather served as the gold standard for created product, fit, literally, for kings and queens all over the globe.

Graeme KennedyNovember 25, 2018

The Qingdao Beer Festival

China loves beer, and with the largest population in the world, it isn’t surprising that they consume more of it than anyone else - more than twice as much as the US in fact. In Qingdao, home to China’s second largest, but perhaps most known beer @tsingtao, over a million people will flock to the city to partake in the annual beer festival, with over 1,300 types of beer, food and performances.

Last year, during the 17 day festival, the 1 million attendees drank 680 tons of beer.

Beer consumption in China is quickly becoming more premium, whether it’s local craft beers, or imported beers, there is a real thirst for the beverage. Even the beloved American classic Budweiser is, as announced last week, is now consumed more in China than in it’s homeland.

With all that being said, can you guess what the most consumed beer in the world is? - because it is not what you think.

Graeme KennedyNovember 5, 2018

Maomao Table Artist

One thing you notice a lot when traveling in China, interestingly, are premium door advertisement. Literally. Fancy doors. Billboards everywhere. This speaks to the trend of premiumisation you can see all over China. From beer, to holidays, to hair salons.

This is an incredible opportunity, opening doors (pun totally intended) not just for brands, but also artists.

This week I met Maomao a young successful artist coming from a family of interior designers who took a different path and is now creating fine art in the form of table decorations. With an impressive resume which includes brands like Mercedes Benz, she has done dozens of pieces this year. Her commentary is often a reflection of cultural intersections or our relationship with our environment. This particular piece, done for naked Retreats called 'nest’ was a statement of our carelessness and wasteful consumption. A thoughtful reminder as China's consumption booms of what is at stake.

Graeme KennedyNovember 4, 2018Table Art, China, MaoMao, premiumisation

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