I could eat you with my eyes. An expression that at least once in our lives we have said or perhaps it has been directed at us. I am passionate about photography and these days I stumbled upon a shelf in my library and in particular on a book by the great photographer Ferdinando Scianna. "I eat you with my eyes" is more of a literary work than a photographic one, because alongside the beautiful photos are alternating stories of personal and collective life.
Food, Scianna tells us, speaks of us. It talks about our traditions, our emotions, and our memories.
"Food is an essential element of our lives"
We are in the Beautiful Country, and we love to savor dishes; we let ourselves be tempted by the taste of our excellent products. We have a strong sense of hospitality at the table, we enjoy the beauty of our dishes, and we capture this beauty with our eyes, but also with our hearts. Very, too often now, we do this with our smartphones, and the reason is generally to share food immediately, compulsively, bulimically, and Instagrammably. Instead, Scianna's book invites us to regain a slow time, that of storytelling and memory.
It's like going on a journey. Yes, food is always an experience of knowledge, if we think about the place it holds in our vacations, or how food takes us back and forth in time on a journey through personal, familial, or societal memories.
The photographic book by Scianna is an invitation to celebrate the importance of food and the stories that connect it to a place, to people, to traditions. It does not stop at seeking the aesthetic part of food. Sometimes the image is enough in itself, powerful and solemn in its message. But other times we run the risk of being seduced by the form of food, by its color, remaining at an ephemeral, superficial level, without going beyond appearance, without listening to what the images convey.
In his work, Scianna presents us with photos of food or the places where food is consumed and sold, but he does not show it in a glossy way; his approach is quite authentic, sincere like the telling of a life story. Food, precisely in its relationship with places and people, is a very interesting concept. What is behind food, what stories are there to discover? Well, there is the narrative and passion of those who produce it, transport it, and sell it. There is the relationship between people, there is culture, and customs that change at different latitudes.
"I was thinking about how in the past there wasn't a habit of photographing dishes."
None of us had a smartphone with us at the table, and it wouldn't even have crossed anyone's mind to take a camera and snap a picture of the dishes. Yet we have so many food-related photos in our family albums. It's just that those snapshots have a different, special flavor because they tell our stories. I think of many family photos of mine where food is a supporting actor, not in the spotlight like in our Instagram shots, but perhaps because of that, even more central because it is enriched by the power of storytelling. I remember my father peeling prickly pears on the terrace by the sea with a fork and knife to avoid getting pricked by a fruit that was truly desired and picked warm from the plants in the Modican countryside. Or my mother cleaning mussels for our Ferragosto dinner with my sister and me during summers long ago when the summer holiday still existed. Or my grandmother rolling out a long, thin dough for ravioli in a 1970s kitchen on one of those many Sundays when we went out to restaurants less often, because Sundays were for grandparents' houses. Our rolls, like those of Scianna, didn't just focus aesthetically on the dish or the glass, but there was always context.
Everything we cut out of our frames is a lost story. So we look for a wider frame for our shots, we try to 'zoom out less on the plate,' rather we look around, behind. And at the same time, when we are at the table, out and about, in a market, in a field, in a cellar or in mom's kitchen, let's ask where those flavors come from, where some traditions or pairings are born. If we open the frame, we do not lose the aesthetics, but include the beauty of the story.
I know, now you are wondering what types of photos were taken.
"Are you also tempted by food?"
What strikes you? Try to think about it. Look beyond the image, beyond the color and aesthetics of the compositions. What story does a dish tell you? To a keen eye, other messages and meanings do not escape. Take your smartphones; they will be full of photographs of dinners, toasts, and people. What do you see now? What do your photographs tell you?
Go out shopping for good things, go out to dinner, prepare good dishes in the intimacy of your kitchen, host friends, travel and let yourself be intrigued by new recipes. Photograph, you can do it for real or in your mind, with your eyes. But without rushing. Eat the food with your eyes. Every now and then, stop and recover that slow time that Scianna proposes. Listen and seek what lies behind. It's not a game; it can be. Rather, it's a way to understand that:
"Everywhere, for those who are passionate about food, there is a story to tell"
And it is not necessarily found at the table.
