Culture

The Entire Internet Is Arguing Over Whether Or Not It’s Possible To Photograph Prawns

"This is true, just tried to take a photo of a prawn and my camera exploded like a banana peel."

by Joseph Earp  4 September 2020
prawns

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When was the last time that you took a photo of a prawn? According to a London bookshop the answer is “never”, you goddamn liar.

Okay. Let’s take this slowly. Overnight, the extremely prestigious London Review Bookshop posted a tweet thread about an “astonishing conversation” the person behind the account had with an acclaimed food photographer.

According to this unnamed photographer, prawns are impossible to photograph due to their “bioluminescence.” So whenever you see a photograph of a prawn, you’re actually looking at one of six genetically-engineered prawns developed in a lab.

I mean, I’ll let the thread explain, if by “explain” I mean go on a long and confusing tangent about prawns:

so every time you see a photo of prawns in a recipe book, they are almost certainly the same six prawns. if you look at enough photos you can get to recognise them quite reliably

— LRB Bookshop (@LRBbookshop) September 3, 2020

Now listen, there’s one of three things going on here.

1) You can’t take photographs of prawns, and nobody’s ever realised before.

2) The London Review of Books Twitter account is going for a late April Fool’s Day prank.

3) Some prankster told the person behind the London Review of Books account that you can’t photograph prawns, and they believed it, hook, line and sinker (no pun intended. I think. Do you catch prawns with a hook?)

In any case, the thread has now prompted my single favourite trend, maybe ever: incredulous boomers posting photos of prawns accompanied by captions like, “how do you account for this?”

Well, looks like we all learned something today. Namely, that you should never, ever try to photograph prawns.

Case closed.