From steak frites and Kentucky Fried Chicken to soba noodles and steamed greens, the images in photographer Mark Abegg de Boucherville’s new book, “Out to Lunch,” are a feast for the eyes, and further proof that a good meal — even if it’s quick or eaten on the street — can bring people together.

Abegg de Boucherville, who started his fashion career on the business side, as chief executive officer of Issa London in the early 2000s, and who later became a photographer and fundraiser, photographed 88 lunches he shared with models in Paris. He shot everything on film, and handprinted the photos with zero retouching.

He let the models choose where they wanted to eat, and joined them at old favorites including Brasserie Lipp, Bofinger and Le Grand Colbert. He also shot them outside — in parks, train stations and on the street — eating fried chicken from a paper bucket, or devouring oranges, slices of cake or croissants.

Noodles also figure big in the book, with one model digging into a plate of pasta pomodoro at Les Vitelloni or slurping soba at Soon Grill, Sanyo and Keko Momo.

Abegg de Boucherville is certainly a versatile snapper. He trains his Contax lens on street food — a bar of Twix or a mustard-streaked hot dog — as enthusiastically as he does on a cheese fondue at Maison Savoyarde or a meat-stuffed parcel at Empanadas.

Abegg de Boucherville says he wanted to show that meals can break boundaries and offer moments of — often fleeting — joy.

“The world that we live in is crazy at the moment, and I wanted to create something real, to come back to the human side of things,” he says over a coffee at Café Ruc in Paris.

“No matter what race, creed, religion we are, we all have to eat food. So I think that if two humans can sit down and share a meal, there is a rapport that’s created, and that rapport is something that I wanted to capture. I wanted to find out about people’s reality,” he says.

“I feel like there is a narrative, a story there, too. There’s emotion, and something real and relatable,” adds Abegg de Boucherville, who was surprised — in a good way — about some of the models’ lunch choices.

“They took me to so many different places. I got the feeling that some of them were quite homesick, and they wanted to share their native foods with me,” he says.

“The Argentinian girls took me for empanadas, and a Japanese model took me for soba. They wanted to share something they really enjoyed. There was so much spontaneity to it. Sometimes I had no idea where we were going. We would just show up somewhere, and then work with what we had,” he adds.

The book has been designed to look like a French brasserie menu with a dark red leatherette cover, gold lettering and metal-edged corners. The inside covers feature black-and-white collages of all the restaurant and food receipts. The models are certainly cheap dates; it looks like all of the bills are less than 70 euros.

Abegg de Boucherville funded the project and published the book himself. He tapped fashion industry creatives Riccardo Ruini as the art director; Andrea Ferola for the illustrations, and Michelangelo Ruini for the graphic design.

The book, priced at 60 euros, launched a few weeks ago, and has been selling at stores including Idea London, Armani Libri in Milan, Yvonne Lambert in Paris, Dashwood Books in New York City and Alias Books in Los Angeles.  

Abegg de Boucherville, who is Swiss and British and based in Paris, has shot for brands including Massimo Dutti and for titles including Vogue, Document Journal and Another magazine. He has also worked on a themed shoot with models before — but against a different backdrop.

In early 2023, nearly a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Abegg de Boucherville launched “Models for Ukraine,” a multimedia portrait project aimed at keeping the conflict in people’s consciousness while raising funds for charity.

He turned his lens on Ukrainian models for a raw series of black-and-white shots that were on show at Paris’ Oddity gallery and event space.

The event also featured video clips of the Ukrainian models, bare faced and wearing plain white shirts, speaking about their emotions and personal experiences during the war. Proceeds from the sale of prints went to the Ukrainian NGO Women’s March, which operates shelters and assists women and children displaced by the war.

Abegg de Boucherville says that with “Out to Lunch” landing in stores, he’s already at work on his next book.

“Everyone is asking me whether I’d do ‘Out to Dinner’ — but I’m not, and I’m not doing ‘Out to Breakfast’ either. My next project is quite fun and interactive, and also has a narrative. I have a lot of crazy ideas, but I’m only one person, and only have so much budget to produce something like this,” says the man who’s clearly ready for a palate cleanser.