A photobook dedicated to soldiers’ food will be presented Friday at the ReBonkers Cultural Centre in Varna, the organisers said. The event will be attended by the author of the publication Matthieu Nicol.
The book Better Food for Our Fighting Men has been nominated for the Prix du Livre for 2023 at the Les Rencontres d’Arles festival in France, the ReBonkers team said.
The photobook contains a selection of images, produced mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, from the archives of the U.S. Army’s Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center near Boston, Massachusetts. A glossary with 24 entries explains some of the acronyms used in the image captions,describes the staples of a typical soldier’s diet and traces the new technologies that enabled the food industry to manufacture and supply those rations. As is often the case, the innovations developed by the U.S. military had multiple applications in civilian life, many of which are manifest on the shelves of supermarkets today.
The book presentation will be accompanied by a pop-up exhibition, through which visitors will be able to feel like real soldiers and taste laboratory food designed for the French army, which they have to prepare themselves, the organizers also informed.
