I am excited to announce that photographer Douglas Gayeton is joining us at our Mozza Scuola di Pizza Charity dinner on the 1st October. As we learn how to make pizza with Nancy Silverton, learn about the wine we are drinking from Joe Bastianich and learn more about the Garden School Foundation from Nancy Goslee Power we will also learn more about what Slow Food really means in a tiny town in Italy from Douglas Gayeton.
This event is totally sold out - thank you to everyone for purchasing tickets. If you would like to purchase Douglas Gayeton's SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town ($50) and have him sign it with a dedication on October 1st please send an email to me at lucy@edibleLA.com and I will make it happen.
With a preface by Carlo Petrini (the founder of Slow Food) and an introduction by Alice Waters need I say more? This book is not only beautiful to look at it's an inspiration to us all where ever we choose to live and what ever we choose to eat.  This truly is edible food for thought.
CLICK TITLE TO READ MORE

 
Douglas Gayeton's SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town is a magical and utterly unique portrayal of rural Italian life, and a tribute to the region's kaleidoscope of charming local characters whose livelihoods and culture center around the everyday pleasures of growing, preparing, and eating food.
Imaginative and interactive portraits are layered with Gayeton's handwritten notes, anecdotes, recipes, quotes, and historical facts and that cleverly bring context and color to the subject of each sepia-toned image and draw us deeper into this romantic, rewarding, and progressively rare way of life. You will fall in love with the intimate images of an entire town whose lives are profoundly bound to the rhythms of nature and inherently exemplify the popular principles that define Slow Food, a multi-national movement dedicated to preserving local food traditions and honoring local farmers and producers.
The unique interplay of pictures and words conveys a thrilling sense of narrative that transcends the page and transports you halfway around the globe. It is a riveting story told in a riveting way: each image is actually comprised of multiple photographs taken over the course of time (from ten minutes to several hours - a photographic approach critics have dubbed "flat film"). The result is nothing less than a new and startling way of seeing photographs. 
 
Preface by Carlo Petrini
Is it difficult to live slowly? Is it just luck to be born into a community in which the production and consumption of clean and fair food is at the heart of its existence; a place where agricultural and culinary traditions are passed down and practiced? 
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Slow Food movement was born in Italy. My generation has been imbued with this type of culture since birth because, until a few decades ago, we were essentially a nation of peasants. But something was broken, even here in Italy, when the industrialization of food caused us to look at this slow way of life as a legacy of the past, something to be forgotten, along with the poverty that accompanied it. Many people now look at the existence of these communities as something exotic, as if they were a curious anomaly that endures despite everything else in our fast moving world. The risk is to react like colonialists struggling with the natives who they wanted to educate: burn everything. 
Today, however, Terra Madre—the vast network of communities created by Slow Food—teaches us that in this "old" way of living, with its myriad of rituals and wisdom we are still thriving, happy, and willing to share the prosperity that transcends material wealth, that exists as an attitude, a fact of life, a way of looking at the world that embodies those values that the consumerist world wants to deny. Food is at the center of these communities: a respectful relationship with the land on which you live and the animals with whom you live. This is a way of perceiving the world in a holistic sense, where everything is a part of something greater, starting from the simplest place. 
The gift of this book lies in the depth with which it introduces us to the slow lives of ordinary people. The photographs and words are rich and undeniably authentic, and could only have been made by someone with a deep sensitivity and understanding that goes beyond the boundaries of nations and languages, and represents the principles at the very heart of the Slow Food movement. 
Through this unusual portrait of a Tuscan community, we come to understand that living slowly, once learned, can be done anywhere. It is not a matter of luck; it is a matter of choice.

 
Introduction by Alice Waters
Douglas Gayeton's images beautifully capture a small Tuscan community that revolves around ancient traditions of growing, foraging, and sharing food. Through his photographs and text, the townspeople come to life, together with the foods that are woven seamlessly into their daily routines. 
 The image of my friend Dario Cecchini is a perfect example. Dario's wife Kim stands in the corner, hands on her hips, and smiles as she watches her husband burst into one of his frequent songs. Nine-inch blade in hand, Dario recites poetry and greets customers as he works. At the counter, an old woman surveys the various roasts and specialties on offer, part of a decades-old daily ritual. This photo instantly brings us to a unique place and time, but goes beyond evoking a different world to actually educating us on the meaning of good meat as envisioned by this legendary butcher. I could not agree more with Dario's rules, scribbled down right there in the corner of the photo: the cattle must have a good life, a good death, a good butcher, and a good cook. He embodies the Slow Food mantra of "good, clean, and fair." 
 Douglas shares with us scenes of village life, a private diary that becomes a documentary of the town's vibrant culture and the surrounding countryside. Foragers carry baskets of wild salad greens, grandmothers gather eggs, the cool Tuscan air finishes salamis carefully hung all in a row. Families gather around the dinner table to eat, laugh and pass shared plates. 
Many have tried to explain Slow Food in written words, but few have managed to communicate the essence of this movement as successfully. The Slow Food movement was born as a reaction to our fast-paced world. Starting with a pasta-eating protest by a group of Italians outraged at the opening of a McDonald's in one of Rome's most beautiful piazzas, it has become champion of a network of producers and co-producers— all of us whose food choices decide which producers will thrive. Slow Food is a global network of 85,000 members and food communities, working to spread taste education, safeguard biodiversity and foster direct relationships between producers and co-producers. Slow Food seeks to explore all the ways that food, beauty and values are intertwined; Slow perfectly illustrates these links between culture and cuisine. 
In these pages, the town of Pistoia is brought to life with so much vibrancy it could even be mistaken for a travel anthology. Readers may be moved to visit the places and search out the people documented within. I am convinced that Douglas's intention in creating it was very different. For me these images are a gentle push to build a life full of traditions right here at home, a reminder to bring those around me into these beautiful daily rituals. A world laden with the same kind of meaning that jumps from these pages can be created right in our own backyards. 
It can begin right at the farmers market. Start up a conversation with a vendor, and soon you will be visiting their farm and meeting producers in and around your own hometown. Even where these small producers can no longer be found and farmers markets have not yet taken root, we can still begin to foster and create a new generation of American artisans. The Slow Food and youth food movements are thinking creatively to ensure that knowledge is not lost with the passing of a generation. We can begin by simply breaking bread around the table, inviting our children into the kitchen to help prepare the family meal, and planting a few herbs in a window box. Your life will be richer for it.

Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town 
Photographs and text 
by Douglas Gayeton 
Preface by Carlo Petrini 
Introduction by Alice Waters 
176 pages, 11" x 13" (landscape) 
75 sepia toned 4-color images, 
8 gatefolds 
Acetate jacket & 4 acetate 
tip-ins printed with text from underlying images 
Hardcover, $50.00 ($62.00 CAN) 
ISBN: 978-1-59962-072-5 
October 2009 publication