There’s this photograph of a perfect pomegranate and it’s been getting at me for some time now. It’s on the cover of a cookbook. The fruit is split open like it’s cracked or ripped but there’s not a drop of juice or a broken seed anywhere to be found. The fleshly white interior of the rind is barely tinged pink. The seeds sit perfectly balanced, poised, inside the labyrinth that makes a pomegranate so intriguing. They look like little ruby jewels lavishing in creamy velvet. They’re plump and a deep crimson — very seductive. And there are exactly nine more seeds casually scattered around it, like they just dropped in to say ‘Hey, we’re here’. Another pomegranate waits in the background, full and untouched, cloyingly out of focus. The entire ensemble rests on what looks like a handcrafted plate and a woven tapestry, like a rich rug. Just looking at this photo I feel like I’m out in the deserts of North Africa. Camels bay outside. My tent swirls with the aromatic steam from a stew of lamb, cinnamon, ginger and saffron cooking over charcoal. And I’m about to reach into this pomegranate to quench my thirst and whet my appetite…. uuummm.

It seems to me that the food stylist who worked on this pomegranate — did her job well because I’m drawn in and bought the cookbook just for its cover. The fact that I like the recipes is just a bonus. This lush provocative image is like my mirage in the shifting sand dunes. It’s wishful thinking and imagination combined with total artifice. Because when anyone breaks open a pomegranate it’s a mess but it’s a beautiful, sensuous mess. And even though we know that to be true, no one wants to see pictures of untidy food — staining juice, ruptured seeds or fruit that’s slightly off color. At least, that’s what art directors think and it’s the food stylist’s job to create the dream.

When I spoke with Alison Levy, a professional food stylist – she told me that for one job, she sorted through a case of raspberries to find the ideal one – in size, shape, color and proportion. The photograph was so going to be so magnified that that fuzz on the raspberry would make it look like a virus instead of the perfect fruit. So with patience and good tweezers — eight hours later – Alison had plucked all the hairs off of a few select berries, making each little drupelet as smooth as a baby’s bottom, just for the picture.

She’s also spent days sorting through bags of potato chips to find that that perfect, iconographic chip that’s not too flat, not too curved and has no dark or burned spots. Then anyone who sees its image, will know instantly what brand it is and how crispy and salty it tastes. One of Alison’s specialties is using dental tools to pick out the fat and grizzle from of a fast-food chain’s hamburgers. So they look better in commercials than they really are. And if their fried chicken needs to have more ‘crunchies’ for a photo shoot, then Alison is there with a polymer adhesive, gluing bits of fried skin onto breasts, wings and drumsticks.

Outside of work, Alison is painter – a fine artist and a mother. She’s involved with the Slow Food movement and actively trying to get her local school lunch program to put away their can openers and start cooking. She admits she struggles with the food styling industry, with all of its contrivances and illusions that are designed to make us buy something. But the work is challenging, it pays well, it’s always different and it’s creative in its own way. When I asked her, how do you pull the hairs out of a raspberry and not make it bleed? She said ‘I’m just really good at what I do.’