“Foodtopia glides gracefully through the increasingly complex world of food, pandemic and all. An important contemporary book.” —Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History

listen, as the waves withdraw, to the rasping
chatter of stone on stone. Surely such tumbling
also takes a toll, burnishing cobbles
into pebbles, erasing bedrock in due time.

I have, from time to time, declared my love for lichen. But that is a lie. I don’t love lichen; I love the idea of lichen. I love that they have made it work, have figured out how to live practically anywhere, to survive terrible conditions, to endure until they can thrive.

. . . because in photographs, emptiness is never entirely empty. It brims over, often, with promises: the assurances that there are connections to be made, meaning(s) to be found, stories that we can co-construct and understand.