A Cultural Mirror Worth Considering: McAtlas

©iStock/Nikolay Chekalin

Photographer and writer Gary He, visited McDonald's in more than 55 countries.

Gary didn't set out to write a book about McDonald's. And, even now, the James Beard Award-winning photographer still says that "McAtlas" — his book about McDonald's — is not a book about McDonald's.

Rather, it's "a visual social anthropology of the world's largest restaurant chain," says Gary, a native New Yorker who spent years traveling to hundreds of outlets of the world's biggest fast-food chain.

"'McAtlas' is the result of my travels across six continents, 55-plus countries, photographing the menu items, the local restaurants, and just watching how locals use those spaces and what they like to eat in those McDonald's," he says. 

On Gary's website:

Internationally, there’s no restaurant where people are eating more often than McDonald’s. It's not just Big Macs and McNuggets, either: McDonald’s menus around the world have long integrated the flavors and dishes of their home countries. Localized menu items now account for about 30% of McDonald’s systemwide sales, not chump change when that total is north of $120 billion.  If we are what we eat, then McDonald's global menu is a cultural mirror worth serious consideration.

As an amateur photographer myself [Laurel Delaney] and I love anything with a global mindset – this book is right up my alley.

Links to learn more:

• McAtlas website.
• Amazon to purchase the book.

Bryan Sansivero Photographs America's Abandoned Homes

©iStock/nathanaparise

For a decade, the New York-based photographer Bryan Sansivero has sought out forgotten, dilapidated homes across the United States — each with its own story to tell. Inside deserted clapboard farmsteads, palatial Antebellum-era plantation houses and maximalist Queen Anne-style structures, Sansivero has discovered many residences that were never emptied, offering a portal into another life.

Sansivero says, "I like the mystery of not knowing what you’re going to find."  Next, he's setting his sights overseas, exploring chateaus and castles in Europe whose histories can stretch back much further in time.

Discover Sansivero's work here.