Market ads, magazine eds

NORMALLY, those big ads on the sides of city buses are given over to new movies or TV shows. But for the next couple of months in Santa Monica, farmers are the new drive-by celebrities. As part of the Santa Monica Farmers Market’s summer-long 25th anniversary celebration, Santa Monica city buses will be adorned with portraits of farmers market stalwarts, bearing the title, “This Is the Face of California Farming.”

The project is the brainchild of market director Laura Avery and will run through Sept. 20. Redondo Beach’s Hill Street Studios set up a booth at the market for two Wednesdays to shoot portraits of farmers.

“We wanted a real Richard Avedon look,” Avery says. “The pictures are all about the person. There’s no backdrops, just farmers’ faces.”

From a pool of roughly 50 photographs, 35 were chosen. So charming are these that there is talk about collecting them into a booklet.

Among the best are a shot of Burkart Farms’ Irene Burkart and her granddaughter Summer, and another of Elmer Lehman and Tsugio Imamoto, old pals who have been there since the market’s first year.

Saveur’s Andrews steps down

COLMAN ANDREWS, the long-time editor of the food magazine Saveur, resigned last week and was replaced by the magazine’s executive editor, James Oseland. Andrews had been with the magazine since it started in 1994, first as executive editor and then, since 2002, as editor. Prior to joining Saveur, Andrews was a well-known contributor to The Times.

Andrews, who says he is finishing work on his memoir and pursuing other projects, says leaving was something he’d been considering for a long time. “I don’t think there was any one last straw, though I do think the magazine is going in a slightly different direction, though to tell the truth, I’m not even sure what it is.”

Last year’s design makeover played a part in the decision. “It wasn’t any secret that I wasn’t real happy with some aspects of it,” he says. Even more of a factor, though, was the decision at the same time to move the magazine’s art director, managing editor, photo editor and production manager from the magazine’s offices in New York to parent company World Publication’s corporate headquarters in Florida.

“I’m sure that made some kind of corporate sense,” Andrews says. “But it changed the nature of the collaborative spirit that we have always had and that has been part of the strength of the magazine.”

Oseland has written for Saveur since 1998 and was named executive editor in December. He has also written for Vogue, Gourmet and Food & Wine. His cookbook “The Cradle of Flavor,” on the food of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, will be published next month.

In a posting on the culinary website eGullet on Tuesday, Oseland reassured Saveur readers that he had no great changes in mind at this time. “There are no Easy Bake recipes in the magazine’s future, no stories about The 10 Hot Chefs of Portland,” he wrote. “Sure, there’ll be a few tweaks and nudges here and there. But Saveur is Saveur. It has a soul that transcends those of us who work here.”