by Jerome D.
Introduction
Per-Anders Jörgensen (b. 1965, Ystad, Skåne, Sweden) is a Swedish photographer, publisher, and creative director based in Malmö — one of the world's most distinctive food and portrait photographers, and the co-founder with his wife Lotta Jörgensen of FOOL Magazine, widely regarded as the most visually ambitious and editorially serious food publication in the world.
He grew up in the southernmost tip of Sweden, in a region where the quality of light — low, soft, and directional for much of the year — is among the finest in Scandinavia. He worked initially in the film industry as part of the camera and electrical department, with credits on internationally recognised Swedish films including Lukas Moodysson's Lilya 4-Ever (2002) and Together (2000). This period gave him a cinematographer's understanding of light — how it shapes volume, how it transforms surfaces, how its direction and quality determine the entire emotional register of an image — that distinguishes his photographic practice from photographers who came to the medium through more conventional routes.
His entry into food photography came when the American magazine Gourmet — then the most prestigious food publication in the United States — approached him for an assignment. He had not previously worked in the genre. He brought to it the same cinematographic eye for natural light and spatial composition that he had developed on film sets, and the results were immediately distinctive: food photography that treated dishes and produce as sculpture to be lit rather than product to be illustrated.
In 2011 he and Lotta founded FOOL Magazine — described on their website as "an independent magazine founded in 2011 by Art Director Lotta Jorgensen and Photographer Per-Anders Jörgensen... a high end take on gastronomy, quite unlike any other." The magazine won Best Food Magazine in the World in 2013, the Gourmand Speciality Award in 2018, and has accumulated awards for journalism, art direction, and book production. Its associated FOOL Agency handles branding, photography, and book production for major food and hospitality clients internationally. They are based at their headquarters in Malmö.
He is a Fujifilm X-Photographer, working with the X and GFX systems, and is one of the most compelling voices in contemporary food and documentary photography — a photographer who has consistently refused the conventions of commercial food photography in favour of something more honest, more human, and more beautiful.
As he wrote on the Fujifilm platform: "Ideally your camera is just there, working seamlessly with and for you. Together we work without worrying about settings and technique, focusing on what really matters — the images."
Camera Gear Used by Per-Anders Jörgensen
Jörgensen's gear is documented across multiple Fujifilm primary sources — his own X-Photographer profile, the X100V "My Milestone" essay written by him in his own words on the Fujifilm platform (March 2020), and the charlenewinfred.com account of a Fujifilm Nordic event in Malmö where a journalist documented his "well-used X100s" on his presentation table. All gear listed below is confirmed from these sources.
Film Era Camera: Fujifilm GA645
Fujifilm GA645 (medium format film) — His confirmed pre-digital camera, stated directly in his own words on the Fujifilm X100V essay: "after working for many years on film with the classic medium format Fuji GA645 cameras, as soon as I received the original X100 it immediately became a favourite member of my camera family." The Fujifilm GA645 is a compact, autofocus medium format camera shooting 6×4.5cm negatives on 120 film — known for the quality of its 60mm f/4 Fujinon lens and for its relative portability compared to traditional medium format SLR systems. It was a natural choice for a photographer who valued image quality and natural light without the bulk and complication of a full professional medium format kit.
 |
| Fujifilm GA645 Find one at MPB |
His years working with the GA645 established the visual discipline — careful attention to light quality, compositional precision within a fixed lens system, the patience that medium format film imposes — that carried directly into his Fujifilm X-series work.
Primary Digital Camera: Fujifilm X100 Series
Fujifilm X100 (original), X100V, and successive X100 generations — His defining digital camera system, confirmed across multiple primary sources as the camera he used for the majority of his personal and editorial work over more than a decade. The Fujifilm "Most Loved X" platform confirms: "Per-Anders Jörgensen from Sweden, created a book 'Eating with the Chefs' with the X100 alone."
He received the original X100 when it was first released and described the immediate connection in his own words: "as soon as I received the original X100 it immediately became a favourite member of my camera family." The charlenewinfred.com account of the Fujifilm Nordic Malmö event confirms the depth of this relationship from a direct eyewitness perspective: "Tools of the trade: one of P-A's well used X100s" — the word "well used" speaking to years of daily professional work with the camera.
The Fujifilm X100V "My Milestone" essay — written entirely by Jörgensen himself in March 2020 — is the most detailed primary source for his relationship with the camera. He used the X100V for his FOOL Magazine shoot at sake maker Terada Honke in Japan, working in temperatures ranging from near-freezing to steaming hot. His description of the camera's appeal is precise: "The retro stylings of the X100 give it an innocent look, but it's a serious professional tool, packed with power and generations of technological advancements." A chef who saw the camera dismissed it as a tourist's camera — and recanted when he saw the results.
 |
| Fujifilm X100 VI See it at Amazon |
The X100 series is a fixed-lens compact camera with an APS-C sensor and a permanently attached Fujinon 23mm f/2 lens (equivalent to 35mm in full-frame terms). This fixed focal length — close to the classic street photography standard — gives Jörgensen the same one-lens discipline he had built through years of using the fixed-lens GA645. He does not switch lenses mid-shoot. The camera and the focal length are constant. The light and the composition do the work.
Interchangeable System: Fujifilm X-Pro3
Fujifilm X-Pro3 — Confirmed on his Fujifilm X-Photographer profile page, listed under "Gear Cameras." The X-Pro3 is Fujifilm's rangefinder-style interchangeable-lens camera — the most film-like of their X-series bodies, with its distinctive hidden rear LCD and its emphasis on optical viewfinder shooting. His inclusion of the X-Pro3 in his confirmed kit reflects the same preference for a discreet, camera-first, screen-minimising working philosophy that draws him to the fixed-lens X100 series.
 |
| Fujifilm X-Pro 3 Find one at Amazon |
Medium Format Digital: Fujifilm GFX
Fujifilm GFX (medium format digital) — Confirmed on his Fujifilm X-Photographer profile page, with a dedicated GFX gallery dated May 2017. The GFX system, with its larger-than-full-frame sensor, would suit his highest-resolution commercial and editorial work — particularly large-format print reproduction for FOOL Magazine, where image quality is a fundamental editorial value. His GFX gallery on the Fujifilm platform demonstrates his use of the system for the specific quality of tonal depth and resolution that medium format digital provides, consistent with his earlier commitment to medium format film in the GA645 era.
 |
| Fujifilm GFX 100 II Find one at MPB |
Shooting Philosophy: Natural Light Only
Natural daylight — his confirmed and defining creative constraint. The Fujifilm X-Photographer biography states without qualification: "Using almost exclusively natural daylight he has worked with top chefs and clients all over the world." This is not a technical limitation but a philosophical commitment. Natural light — particularly the low, soft, directional quality of Nordic and Japanese light that defines the environments where he does most of his work — is for Jörgensen the foundation of the image's emotional quality. Flash, studio lighting, and artificial supplements would produce a different kind of photograph: technically controlled, predictably consistent, and fundamentally different from the images he makes.
His background as a camera and electrical department professional on film sets makes this choice particularly deliberate. He understands artificial lighting at a professional level — and has chosen to work without it. The constraints of natural light determine when he can photograph, at what angle, and with what technical parameters. They are the discipline within which his visual intelligence operates.
Technique and Style
Per-Anders Jörgensen's photography is defined by a quality that is immediately recognisable but difficult to articulate: the sense that every image, however carefully made, has the quality of an unrepeatable moment in natural light. His food images do not look like food photography. They look like moments of observation — someone cooking, someone placing a bowl on a table, light falling through a window onto an arrangement of ingredients that happens to be beautiful.
This quality comes from his insistence on natural daylight and from his background in cinema. A cinematographer working in available light does not build the image from lighting equipment outward; they find the position, the angle, and the timing that allows the existing light to do what it can do. Jörgensen brings this same approach to still photography: he finds the light first, then the subject, then the precise moment within the available window when the two are in the right relationship.
His portrait work shares the same quality. His subjects — world-class chefs, producers, artisans working in their own environments — are photographed in the light of their own kitchens, cellars, and workshops. The environmental context is always present, always specific, always contributing to the image's meaning. He does not separate the person from their world.
His statement on camera choice reflects a philosophy that extends to his entire approach: "When I started as a photographer I chose which camera to use depending on the shoot, knowing there was no universal solution that would work for everything. The choice of kit was, and is, very personal." And then, more precisely: "Ideally your camera is just there, working seamlessly with and for you. Together we work without worrying about settings and technique, focusing on what really matters — the images."
The fact that he shot an entire book — Eating with the Chefs — with one X100 and its fixed 35mm-equivalent lens is the clearest statement of this philosophy in practical terms. One camera, one focal length, natural light, the ability to move through a working kitchen without drawing attention: these are the conditions under which his images are made.
FOOL Magazine — his most sustained creative achievement as a publisher as well as a photographer — embodies the same values at an editorial level. It is a food magazine that treats gastronomy with the same seriousness that a literary journal treats prose: extensive, carefully edited long-form writing, photography that prioritises atmosphere and human context over product illustration, and production values that make the physical object as pleasurable as its content. The magazine's multiple international awards confirm that this approach resonates beyond a specialist audience.
How to Imitate His Style in Post-Processing
Jörgensen's aesthetic — the warm, diffused quality of natural Nordic and Japanese light on food, surfaces, and faces — is grounded entirely in the quality of light at the moment of capture. Post-processing serves to preserve and refine that quality rather than to create it. Pixlr is an excellent tool for approaching his look:
Do not add warmth artificially.
His images have warmth because they are shot in the specific quality of natural light that is actually warm — window light in Scandinavian kitchens, the amber glow of a Japanese sake brewery. In Pixlr's White Balance tool, preserve the colour temperature of the original capture rather than adding a warm tint in post. The warmth should come from the light, not the slider.
Protect the highlight detail obsessively.
Natural light from a window produces bright highlights and deep shadows simultaneously. His images hold detail in the brightest surfaces — the steam from a pot, the glaze of a dish in direct light — without blowing them out. In Pixlr's Curves tool, pull the highlight end of the curve slightly down to ensure that the brightest tones retain texture and information.
Allow natural shadows to be deep.
He does not lift shadow detail uniformly. The shadows in his food images — cast by the edge of a chopping board, the curve of a bowl — are deep and real. In Pixlr, resist the instinct to recover shadow information. Let the shadows be as deep as the light actually made them.
Minimise post-processing interventions.
His images are not heavily processed. The quality of light that defines them cannot be improved in post — it can only be degraded. In Pixlr, make only the adjustments that are necessary to correct technical imperfections in the capture (white balance, exposure accuracy), and stop before you start shaping the light's character rather than preserving it.
How to Shoot Like Per-Anders Jörgensen
Study light before you study photography.
Jörgensen's visual education was as much cinematographic as photographic — and the most important thing cinema teaches is how to read and use available light. Before picking up the camera, spend time in your shooting environment observing how the light changes across the day: where it enters, what quality it has at different times, how it falls on surfaces and volumes. The image is already there in the light. The camera records what you find.
Work in the light you have, not the light you wish you had.
Natural daylight imposes a schedule, a direction, and a quality. Rather than supplementing it with artificial sources, adjust your schedule and position to make the best of what is available. If the light is not right, come back when it is. The patience this requires produces images that artificial light cannot replicate.
Use a fixed focal length and master it completely.
An entire book made with one X100 and one focal length. The constraint is the discipline. Choose a focal length that suits the way you see and use it exclusively until you stop thinking about it. The camera should be invisible in your working practice — only the light and the subject should occupy your attention.
Photograph people in their own environments.
His chef portraits work because the subjects are in their kitchens, their gardens, their cellars — surrounded by the materials and tools of their practice, in the light of their own working environments. Do not separate your subjects from their worlds. The environment is part of the portrait.
Think editorially, not just photographically.
FOOL Magazine demonstrates that the most important creative decisions happen at the editorial level — what to photograph, how to frame it within a larger narrative, how to integrate image and text. Develop an editorial intelligence alongside your photographic one. The ability to conceive and develop a body of work around a sustained theme or subject is what distinguishes a portfolio from a magazine.
Treat food as sculpture, not illustration.
Conventional food photography illustrates a dish — it shows what the dish looks like. Jörgensen treats food as material for photography in the same sense that a sculptor treats clay: as something to be understood in terms of volume, light, surface, and space. Before photographing any food subject, spend time looking at it from multiple angles and in different light, asking what quality makes it visually compelling rather than what quality makes it appetising.
Legacy
Per-Anders Jörgensen's significance in contemporary food photography is the demonstration that the genre can sustain the same level of visual and editorial seriousness as any other form of documentary photography — and that the combination of natural light, a fixed-lens camera, and a cinematographic understanding of how light shapes volume can produce images that belong in a fine art context as much as in a magazine.
FOOL Magazine has influenced the visual direction of food publishing internationally since its founding. Its combination of long-form journalism, artist-quality photography, and exceptional production values has been widely studied and imitated — though rarely matched. Its multiple international awards reflect a genuine consensus that it represents something genuinely different in the genre.
His relationship with Fujifilm — as one of their most prominent and long-standing X-Photographers — has also demonstrated the professional viability of compact, fixed-lens cameras for editorial and commercial work at the highest level. His body of work with successive generations of the X100 is one of the most sustained demonstrations of what that camera system can produce in the hands of a photographer who has fully internalised its specific capabilities and limitations.
At his Malmö base, through FOOL Magazine, FOOL Agency, and his ongoing photography practice, he continues to work at the intersection of gastronomy, photography, and editorial design — combining the cinematographer's patience with light, the documentary photographer's commitment to human context, and the publisher's editorial intelligence in a practice that is genuinely his own.
Books by Per-Anders Jörgensen
Eating with the Chefs (2014, Phaidon) — His landmark book, shot entirely with the Fujifilm X100. A collection of portraits and images of the world's great chefs in their own environments — kitchens, gardens, fishing boats, markets — made during visits that combined meal preparation, conversation, and photography. The book that most directly embodies his philosophy of natural light, fixed focal length, and human presence.
 |
| See it at Amazon |
FOOL Magazine (2011–present, biannual) — His ongoing editorial project, now running to over twenty issues. Each issue is both a magazine and a collector's object — extensively photographed, designed to exceptionally high production standards, and treating gastronomy as a subject of genuine cultural and intellectual seriousness.
Where to See Per-Anders Jörgensen's Work
- Website: jorgensen.se — his photographer website, with portfolio and contact information.
- FOOL Magazine: fool.se — the magazine and agency website, with information on current and back issues, the FOOL Agency, and events.
- Fujifilm X-Photographer profile: fujifilm-x.com — his official Fujifilm X-Photographer page, with galleries and stories.
- Instagram: @perandersjorgensen — his personal Instagram account.
- FOOL Magazine Instagram: @foolmagazine — the magazine's official account.
Conclusion
Per-Anders Jörgensen built his photographic practice on the Fujifilm GA645 medium format film camera before transitioning entirely to the Fujifilm X100 series — using successive generations of the fixed-lens compact from the original X100 through the X100V for the majority of his editorial and personal work, including the entire book Eating with the Chefs. His confirmed additional cameras are the Fujifilm X-Pro3 for interchangeable-lens work and the Fujifilm GFX for medium format digital assignments. He shoots exclusively in natural daylight, without flash or artificial lighting.
The combination of a cinematographer's eye for available light, a medium format film photographer's patience and compositional discipline, and the unobtrusive portability of the X100's fixed 35mm-equivalent lens has produced some of the most beautiful and seriously conceived food and portrait photography of the past two decades.
"Ideally your camera is just there, working seamlessly with and for you. Together we work without worrying about settings and technique, focusing on what really matters — the images."
This article contains sponsored links, I might earn a commission at no extra cost to you.