Profile of Matthieu Nicol’s collection of vintage photo-cookbooks

IMA, Vol. 30, Winter 2019

For IMA magazine’s “Collector’s Eye” column, I wrote a profile of Matthieu Nicol and his collection of vintage photo-cookbooks.

In 2016, at a yard sale in Brittany, Nicol came across a small book that kickstarted the idea for his unusual collection. Published by the FBHF (the French horsemeat butchers’ federation) the book Gastronomie de la Viande de Cheval (Gastronomy of horsemeat) is effectively a brochure singing the praises of this sometimes controversial food. This yard sale find gave him the idea of starting a collection of “accidental photobooks”—books that were not intentionally created as photobooks but where photography and layout play a major part.