Gail Skoff

Gail Skoff is a photographer known for her handcolored prints.

She is married to wine-buyer Kermit Lynch; they have two children. They live in Berkeley, California and Provence.

Artwork

Skoff's early work involved hand-tinted photographs of costumed models. Skoff has cited as influences Julia Margaret Cameron and early 20th century Pictorialists. Of Skoff's hand-colored landscape photos, Jussim and Lindquist-Cock raise the question "what degree of color manipulation removes a print from 'photography' and places it in 'graphic arts.'"

Skoff contributed handcolored photos to Reclaiming Paradise: American Women Photograph the Land, a traveling exhibit from the Tweed Art Museum in Duluth, Minnesota, featuring landscapes by 20 female photographers. Writing about the exhibit for The New York Times, Vivien Raynor described "Utah", which she called the best of Skoff's three entries, as "crackled like the surfaces of old paintings... a metaphor for human flesh by the addition of rose pink and highlights of silver grey." Hal Fischer said that her Utah landscapes "[achieve] a form that is startlingly modern, bringing to mind the unrealities of NASA's satellite pictures of earth." A review of Lynch's book Inspiring Thirst notes the "evocative black-and-white photography of the French and Italian vignerons, vineyards, landscapes and food."

In her book A Taste for Provence, food historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz tells of a collaboration between Alice Waters, Kermit Lynch, food writer Richard Olney, and Gail Skoff that resulted in the 1994 publication of an illustrated cookbook Lulu's provenc̜al table : the exuberant food and wine from Domaine Tempier Vineyard. Horowitz writes that Skoff's photographs give the book its "dramatic presentation." A reviewer for The Observer called Skoff's work on the book "breathtakingly beautiful."

Skoff's food art has appeared in both art magazines and food magazines. The cover of Gastronomica 's Fall 2002 issue featured Skoff's photograph of a man eating a tomato with hards covered in dirt. The image inspired strong reactions, both positive and negative. A Los Angeles bookstore returned all of their copies of the issue because some customers were offended by the image. (Whether they were offended by the dirt, the sensuality of the image, or some other offense was unclear.) Of the image, the magazine's editor, Darra Goldstein wrote "Here is the image to reconnect us with the soil, to celebrate the organic, to remind us of the sensual pleasure of biting into an utterly ripe tomato." She wrote that "many readers... found the image joyful in its evocation of summer warmth and bounty."

Books

Books illustrated with Skoff's photographs

Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France (1988) Chez Panisse Cooking (1988) Lulu's Provenc̜al Table : The Exuberant Food and Wine from Domaine Tempier Vineyard (1994) Cooking By Hand (2003) Inspiring Thirst: Vintage Selections from the Kermit Lynch Wine Brochure (2004)

Catalogues and collections including Skoff's works

Celebrations (1974) The Photographers' Choice: A Book of Portfolios and Critical Opinion (1975) New Landscapes (1981) Landscape as Photograph (1985)

Selected solo exhibitions

Introductions '74, Phoenix Gallery, San Francisco (1974) American Cultural Center, Paris (1977) Washington State University, Pullman (1978) Simon Lowinsky Gallery, San Francisco (1980) Equivalents Gallery, Seattle (1982) Jones Troyer Gallery, Washington DC (1984)