Photographer John Carey spent much of 2020 documenting the Covid-19 pandemic through the eyes of top chefs forced to close their restaurants by the UK Government.
Called Chefs in Lockdown, the book shows the isolation, vulnerability, and raw emotion experienced by chefs and is designed to be a historical document to commemorate a unique moment in time, according to Carey.
Due to be published in March to coincide with the fifth Anniversary of when the restaurants were forced to close, it features more than 180 chefs from across the country, including Angela Hartnett, Claude Bosi, Jason Atherton, Paul Ainsworth, Nathan Outlaw, Jack Stein and Alex Nietosvuori.
Carey says he embarked on the self-funded project having no work and no income as a result of the lockdowns but a desire to be creative. The subsequent £18,000 crowdfund on the Kickstarter platform will pay for the design, the editing, the proofing, the printing, the shipping, the storage, the distribution and the promotion of the book.
Pledges on Kickstarter start at £10 for people to have their name in the back of the book as a ‘supporter’ of the project and also include £50 for a copy of the book, £100 for an invitation to the book launch, and £750 for a portrait photoshoot by Carey.
A proportion of further sales beyond the crowdfund will be donated to support The Burnt Chef Project, as an organisation dedicated to providing mental health and wellbeing support, education and training to the hospitality industry.
“After a time spent locked down at home with my family, I started to think about how much of my life I spend in restaurants,” Carey says.
“I started to think about what was happening inside the restaurants themselves. How were they left after the ‘final’ service? What were they like now? These warm, welcoming places must be cold, abandoned, neglected, deteriorated? And what about the chefs themselves?”
While Chefs in Lockdown will predominantly be the photographs, it will also feature written contributions from people including Tom Parker-Bowles, Angela Hartnett, Pierre Koffmann, Adam Byatt, John Williams, Phil Howard, Tom Kerridge, Calum Franklin, Thomasina Miers, James Martin and Robin Hutson.
To support the project, visit the Kickstarter page here.