The art of edible storytelling

Known for her candid, editorial style, photographer Beca Jones captures people, food and landscapes – and knows how to bring a restaurant’s spirit to life.

A restaurant is far richer than its final plate conveys. The “hero shot” of a perfectly plated dish tells only a fraction of the story. What fascinates me are all the things happening in orbit: the gestures, the pauses, the choreography at the pass, the mise en place, and the suggestion of what came before the napkins are left crumpled. Each dish is the result of many hands and hours, and it feels remiss to gloss over that. For me, photographing restaurants isn’t about perfection, it’s about capturing all of its beautiful mess.

I shoot with an editorial, fly-on-the-wall approach – candid and quietly observant. Through reportage, I look for narratives in the connective tissue between people, place and plate. I’m happiest when there’s a story to unearth, looking at the meshwork of a place, not a dish in silo, but all the inextricable parts that shape it.

I moved from indie publishing into photography at the tail end of the lockdowns, in summer 2022. Like many twenty-somethings, I’d spent a lot of time ruminating in my room and felt ready to burst out anew, still carrying my love of storytelling.

There was talk of a “Roaring Twenties”, but what actually unfolded, for me at least, felt far less raucous – a slow-simmering desire for genuine connection. Supper clubs emerged as a response to that longing. I began photographing over 30 of them for an ongoing project, from crayfish boils to foragers’ feasts, strangers gathered to share food, laughter and reflection. It sparked an interest in the power of food to connect people, and how it speaks to something innately human.

Naturally, this evolved into photographing restaurants with that same thirst for capturing energy and connection. Restaurants are frenetic spaces teeming with stories. Like self-contained worlds, they hold the full spectrum of life and all its drama, just with slightly better table manners. It’s where proposals, break-ups and everything in between happen. They’re the backdrop to both the small and the seismic. They’re cinematic, the sets for seminal scripts. I think of Tony Soprano’s ritualistic dinners, or Pulp Fiction’s diner debate on divine intervention. Restaurants have long been settings for revelation – places where characters are stripped bare and truths unfold between courses.

Writers have always known this. Hemingway wrote in Paris bistros as a halfway house between solitude and spectacle, where he could watch, think and write. James Baldwin called them “a refuge for the watcher”. They remind me that storytelling needs little more than a table and time to observe people living their lives.

Entering a restaurant as a photographer feels like slipping in through the stage door, that liminal space between performance and the real thing. You learn to read the room, freezing when a chef shouts “Backs!”, knowing when to move to the pass, when a grill will flame, and the kitchen dance. Restaurants are transient spaces in constant flux, and storytelling lives in motion, not stillness. This impermanence is both the challenge and the joy of photographing them.

My aim is to capture the buzz without disturbing it, to blend in, not interrupt. The best camera is the one you have with you, and for me, a fleeting moment is worth more than a perfectly composed image. Kitchens are often tiny, with multiple people wielding knives within one square metre, so keeping my kit light helps me stay nimble and unnoticed. The moment you wheel in heavy equipment, you become a hurdle. The best compliment is: “We didn’t even notice you were here.”

Of course, restaurant lighting isn’t always on my side: tungsten, neon strips and fluorescents bouncing off stainless steel. A small, portable light has become a saviour when natural light is out of reach. There’s sometimes a compromise, but my favourite images come from staying agile. I’m often balancing on wobbly chairs or contorting myself into corners for the shot.

Beyond being (hopefully) invisible, I think it’s important to show up with positivity, curiosity and playfulness. Photography doesn’t need to be that serious, and people mirror your energy. When someone’s guard drops, the camera captures a truer version of them. I once said “cute” after taking a portrait of a tattoo-covered chef; he said he’d never been called cute before, but something softened in the images that followed. It’s a misnomer that photographers need bravado or a black turtleneck to command a room – humility has served me better. Sometimes that means putting the camera down to help carry crates or clear a counter, small gestures that shift you from outsider to part of the room’s fabric.

Just as a plate has many minds behind it, so does a photograph. It’s a team effort. Chefs, art directors and stylists bring perspectives that shape the final image, with the client as the north star. The best shoots are when we work side by side towards a shared vision, and the images are stronger for it.

Ultimately, I want to give an honest portrayal. I shoot as though telling the story frame by frame, building sequences rather than isolated snapshots. I look for what happens in the margins, the periphery, the soft spaces where unguarded moments reveal the most. It’s about celebrating the unseen hours, the collective effort, the routine, and the small, significant acts that hold a service together. I keep edits natural and warm, nothing too processed, in the hope the images feel tactile and transportive.

In the end, restaurants are where life plays out, scene after scene, service after service, an endless reel of grit, grace, humour, hunger, joy, exhaustion and everything in between. My hope is to capture the graft in all its messy glory.