The phrase “meat is murder” comes to perhaps its ultimate comedic conclusion in the new photographic series from minimalist photography team Ilka & Franz, Tragic Murder of a Hamburger. The duo recently teamed up with set designer Adam Purnell and food stylist Udo Reichelt-Schaurer and, as they tell The Creators Project, “murdered a bunch of fast foods.”A combination of stills and GIFs, Tragic Murder of a Hamburger features a number of popular food items getting offed. A taco gets sawed in half, sushi rolls head into an incinerator aboard a conveyor belt, and a piece of cake is victim to a hit-and-run, amongst other sudden and violent culinary deaths.
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“We thought it was funny and went with it, almost created the story around the title rather than the other way around,” says Ilza and Franz. “One of the early ideas was to cut up a hot dog with a saw and make a GIF out of it and from there the concept developed.”“We wanted the ideas behind each of the murder scenes to be really dark and decided on a gun crime in a back alley, a cremation, a drowning, a car crash, and a taco getting sawn into pieces,” they add. “We wanted to play with the idea of the murder victims really being food-shaped people. The viewer sees a very bright, pastel toned and innocent looking picture but once they work out what is happening, it becomes very different.”Maybe it’s a fair conceptual fate for the steady stream up culinary atrocities served up at fast food establishments. It’s also a nice satirical play on the slow biological murder these “restaurants” serve up to their customers.
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