SCRAPBOOK: A Pandemic Archive from the Los Angeles Food Community by Chloe Chappe, 2022, SCRAPBOOK is an archival book of food related documents from quarantine in Los Angeles compiled by chef Chloe Chappe.
I started working on SCRAPBOOK in December 2020. I wanted to collect food-related documents from during quarantine because I saw that other people in the food industry had been keeping track of time in the same way I was. Some of them were keeping a journal of meals they had made during quarantine, some were making and delivering food to people, and lots of people were supporting restaurants by ordering take-out. I wanted to have an archive to show these patterns of behavior; our shared humanity while we were separated. I emailed some friends in the food industry, and then decided to open up the call for submissions to people on Instagram. The collection phase lasted 5 months, from December 2020-April 2021, during which I received submissions from chefs I admire, strangers with whom I’ve since become friends, and close friends as well. I worked with my friend Alex Arzt who runs the printing press A Magic Mountain Press in Oakland, CA. We had monthly video calls to figure out what the book would look like and how we’d organize it. My friend Mars Rojas helped with the book design, and then after a little over a year of work, Alex began printing the books in February 2022. —Chloe Chappe
Softcover, half letter size, center sewn in red thread, 60 pages, USA, 2022.