Traditional cooking, in a modern key.
The subject
Luciano Monosilio and his restaurant Luciano Cucina Italiana, a few steps from Campo de' Fiori: pasta made on site, seasonal cooking, Italian tradition codified with rigour.
The point of view
Luciano is a deeply Roman chef: you feel his bond with the city and its tradition, yet he is also very contemporary. For me this meant a mismatch of rhythm: modern is more dynamic and fast, traditional softer and slower.
An elegance with no ornament translates into cleanness: not necessarily minimalism, but precision. In the dishes I deliberately placed many elements with geometric patterns, which gave me a sense of dynamism and movement, to bring modernity to dishes born from a traditional idea.
The journey
2022: portraits of Luciano, the interiors of the renovated restaurant and the dishes, for all communication uses.
The images appeared on social media and in digital magazines.
Food & Beverage Photography: Luciano Monosilio
Luciano Monosilio is one of the most recognisable Roman cooks of his generation. His restaurant is built around a precise idea: to make Italian tradition accessible without dismantling its meaning, with pasta made in a small workshop in the basement and raw materials chosen with the kind of attention fine dining usually reserves for other contexts.
The work covers portraits of the chef, the interiors of the renovated restaurant and the food itself. For each dish I built a set that staged the raw material as part of the story: rings of raw onion, opened mussels, clams and seaweed, yellow datterini. Each photograph tries to tell the dish before it shows it.
Do you have a subject that deserves a point of view, not just a photograph?