The Camera Eats First: Earl Carter

Julie Gibbs Can you tell me where you grew up?

Earl Carter I was born and raised in Melbourne, one of three children. My mother was a florist and had an appreciation of the natural world. She would take me to the [Queen] Victoria Market to do the weekly shop. It was at the time of postwar immigrants in Australia, so there was a lot of Italian and Greek fruit and vegetable sellers. There was always banter between them and my mother.

It wasn’t till much later that I ended up passionate about food and food photography. My mother arranged for me to be a Lions Club exchange student to Japan when I was 15. I ended up going to Fujiyoshida, about two hours south of Tokyo, at the foothills of Mount Fuji.

A friend of the host family was a photographer. He would come and pick me up at three o’clock in the morning. He couldn’t speak English, I couldn’t speak Japanese, so it was just a lot of gesturing and pointing. I would help with his large-format camera and tripod and we’d stumble through the snow in the pitch black, set up at a predetermined point and wait for the sun to rise. Sure enough, there was the classic scene of the sun rising over Mount Fuji with the ancient water mill and the house below. It was amazing.