ALBERTO BLASETTI: ITALY’S DISTINGUISHED FOOD PHOTOGRAPHER

In late September I needed photographs to illustrate my story “Top Chef Vissani Finally Opens in Rome”. Instead of the usual small selection the PR agent sent my over two hundred all by the same photographer Alberto Blasetti. I looked him up on Google and his website (www.albertoblasettti.com) was so impressive that I contacted him.
A few days later we met for this interview at another restaurant he’d photographed “L’Osteria di Birra del Borgo” at Via Silla 25a, a ten-minute walk from the Vatican Museums. Clearly stated in its name this spacious beer hall specializes in a vast selection of artisanal beers all explained on large black boards, as is its extensive menu of burgers, large salads, typically Roman fried antipasti, and imaginative pastas. It’s especially renown for its pizzataio, Luca Pezzetta (awarded 3 toques (the top rating) by the magazine/guide Gambero Rosso).

In almost all my interviews about food, particularly those with chefs, my first question is often what are their first memories of food? Yours?
Good question. I have to think a little. Maybe those connected to my maternal grandparents: Rosa and Marcello. My grandmother’s soups, particularly made of fagioli or lentils with ditalini rigati; my grandfather’s love of cheese and coldcuts, which he ate slowly and methodically towards the end of each meal before fruit giving me little tidbits. My grandmother’s Roman specialties were fiori di zucche ripieni, fried lamb brains, lamb. Hardly any fish; it’s still very expensive.


The bio on your website (www.albertoblasetti.com) says you studied philosophy at university; can you tell me about your background? How did you become a photographer and then a photographer specializing in food, drink, and chefs’ portraits?
I was born in 1986 and grew up in Massa D’Albe, a tiny town near Avezzano in Abruzzo. My mother was Roman and my father abruzzese. My life-story is a bit zigzag, but in brief, since I was a teenager, I always wanted to be a photographer. If I hadn’t become a photographer, I would have traveled the world doing whatever job came along so I could travel.


Who was your mentor and what did you learn from him?
My lucky break came when through friends I was introduced to two famous photographers in the movie world, Swiss-born Philippe Antonello and Stefano Montesi, and became their assistant. They filmed together on set, but also created movie posters. After three years with them, so around ten years ago, I began to take photographs of food for the agency “Cibando” thus becoming one of the first Italian photographers to specialize in food and brochures for restaurants. In those days food photography was disparaged a bit like wedding photography. You did it to make money, but kept it hidden. For me it was dream come true! The perfect combination for someone with both a love for travel and for gastronomy! I got to travel all over Italy and to eat delicious food. Soon my career took off thanks to additional freelance commissions and then meeting six years ago my significant other, Annalisa Zordan, a writer for Gambero Rosso and recently the mother of my baby girl Linda.


Colleagues you admire?
Although I never had the opportunity to meet him and he died a few years ago, Bob Noto who was the first Italian food photographer. He discovered Ferran Adrià.


Where have your photographs been published?
By Rizzoli International, Giunti Editore, De Agostini Editore, and in Food & Wine Italia, Cook_inc., Fortune, RFood, La Repubblica, Gambero Rosso Magazine, Marco Polo Viaggi, Gola Magazine, Tabloid Panorama, Rivista 11, Il Venerdì di Repubblica, Donna Moderna, Robinson and La Cucina italiana.


You have taken the photographs for five books?
Yes, I took the cover and some shots in Matteo Zed’s “Il Grande Libro dell’Amaro italiano” organized in alphabetical order by region with additional chapters on bitters and digestives from other European countries and on those used in cocktails; “Twist on Classic” about Rome’s very famous bar “Jerry Thomas” modeled on American speakeasies; “Washoku” about classic Japanese cuisine by television star chef Hirohiko Shoda, who lives in Rome and is the ambassador of Japanese cuisine in Italy; “Il gioco della pizza: le magnifiche ricette del re della pizza” (“The Pizza Game: Magnificent Recipes by the King of Pizza”) by pizzataio Gabriele Bonci and food journalist Elisia Menduni; and “100 Piatti da assaggiare una volta nella vita”, (“100 Dishes to Taste at Least Once in Your Life”) by Italy’s youngest food critic Lorenzo Sandano.


What are some of the dishes you judge must be tasted at least once in a lifetime?
There are many. For examples, Nikko Romito’s cauliflower. Uliassi’s pasta with lard; Diego Rossi, the chef a “Trattoria Trippa” in Milan, prepares a divine revisited vitello tonnato; and the chef at Mammaròssa, Franco Franciosi’s pasta with lamb ragù.

You are working now on a sixth book?
Yes, it’s in English and forthcoming in March, The New Cucina italiana: What to Eat, What to Cook, and Who to Know in Italian Cuisine Today is by the award-winning journalist and prolific author of culinary books Laura Lazzaroni. While not disparaging the already well-known pluri-awarded chefs, her aim is for Americans to discover that today Italy’s most special cuisine is also found in the kitchens and restaurants of young chefs. Few are known abroad and all are worth a visit!


The list of chefs you have photographed?
You can find them all on my website. In addition to a brief bio and how to contact me, my website is divided by topic: Food, Drink, Portraits and Tearsheets. Each photo has a caption, which includes where it was published.


What camera do you use?
A Canon 5d mark 4.


Sometimes I take my own food shots; can you give me some advice?
If possible ask for a table near a window to be in natural not artificial light because artificial light causes reflections particularly if the dish is served on a white plate. Pay attention to the framing of the photo. Pictures of food from above are not always the best angle. For example, a plate of pasta is best photographed not from above but at the level of the pasta. I often use a flash. If you can’t sit by a window, it’s better to have artificial lights from the sides not from above. Light from above tends to flatten. The best scenario is if there is a small lamp on the table. Then you have to play around with the lighting.


Here in Rome you have done photographic campaigns for the restaurants Birra del Borgo where we are sitting, La Pergola, All’Oro, Imagò, and the Hassler, Hilton, Aldovrandi Villa Borghese, St. Regis Rome, Pantheon, and Sofitel hotels; outside Rome? Oliver Glowig’s Barrique just outside Rome, Liquore Strega, “Fud Bottega Sicula”, “Lume Milano”, and St. Regis Venice, to name a few. Abroad? “Ambroisie” in Paris, “Relae” and “Manfreds” in Copenhagen, “Maaemo” and “Himkok” in Oslo, “Under”, the world’s largest underwater restaurant also in Norway, and “Twins Garden” in Moscow among others.


Your most recent free-lance projects?
“Osteria del Mirasole” near Bologna, and “ À Terre”, a modern French bistro in Copenhagen.

What dish do you like most to photograph?
I’m not sure. If you speaking about gourmet cuisine, even i primi piatti can sometimes be “plated” in an unusual, very particular way. Generally speaking I’d still have to say i primi piatti’. They are especially photogenic; they’re always mouth-watering, appetizing.


Of the many chefs you’ve photographed who was the hardest and who was the easiest to photograph?
The hardest: maybe Heinz Beck, but not because he is a difficult person, but because he was the first chef with three Michelin stars that I photographed so I was very tense. He’s very busy so I had very little time. I had to take the perfect portrait super-fast. He was very kind; he offered me some champagne. The difficulty was not Beck’s fault; it was because I was very tense.
Instead, Christian Puglisi was the most relaxing, the chef of “Relae” in Copenhagen. He has a Sicilian father, a Norwegian mother and has worked in Denmark for several years now. He has many restaurants in Copenhagen, but the best known is “Relae”. He also owns “Farm of Ideas”, the farm where most of his produce comes from. I spent three days with him in his many locations so maybe the atmosphere was relaxed when I took his portrait because we’d already spent so much time together.

Your website points out that you are a gourmet; what are your favorite foods?
I dish I make frequently at home is pasta with olive oil and parmigiano. It’s very simple to make, but with a good brand of pasta, which maintains its cooking well, a good olive oil, and good parmigiano, it’s mind-boggling. I especially like the pastas Benedetto Cavalieri from Puglia and Mancini from the Marche. Without hesitation pasta is my favorite food.


Your favorite wines?
Champagnes and in this moment I’ve become obsessed with refreshing red wines aged in steel. For example Pinot Noir from Burgundy. My two life-long favorite cocktails are martinis and “Old Fashioned”. When I want to judge how talented a barman is I always ask for a martini. It’s both the most simple and the most difficult cocktail to make. My favorite is called an “In and Out”, which contains no vermouth expect a tiny splash in the shaker to aromatize the frozen gin and ice.


A dish you never eat?
Olives. I find them revolting. I have a phobia towards them, but towards not olive oil.


A non-Italian cuisine that you especially like?
French. It’s existed  for a decade now, but I only discovered it last year.  An abbreviation of bistro and gastronomy, “La Bistronomie”: is the direction that excellent food is taking, the axis of the cuisine of the future, the perfect balance, the synthesis between the unique techniques used in starred/ haute cuisine and immediacy and casual style of the bistro or trattoria. On your plate you have dishes created using great techniques on simple ingredients. Their appearance may not be spectacular, but their taste is sublime and the price is right. In Paris now there are many such bistros with Michelin stars because their service, their atmospheres are relaxed, their cuisine is simple, restful, without the anxiety of the super stars, yet you eat divinely. In Italy similar places are “Marzapane”, “Trippa” and “Caro Melo”.

Like Sandano’s book about dishes to taste at least once in a lifetime, there are many books and articles about the 10 restaurants you must eat at at least once in a lifetime?
Exclusding the pluri-starred restaurants like Beck, Uliassi or Romito because that’s too easy, the restaurants that recently have favorably impressed me the most are “Marzapane” in Rome, Carmelo Chiaramonte’s “Osteria Caro Melo” in Donnalucata, Sicily, and “Osteria Mammaròssa” in Avezzano, the only restaurant where I was born that I dream about. It deserves a Michelin star, but has not yet been discovered.

You love to travel, but, if you didn’t live in Rome, where would you like to live?
In the country, in Abruzzo, in Massa D’Albe, which counts only 600 inhabitants, where I was born. I miss being surrounded by nature. My significant other Annalisa is from Padua; she’s a city person so she says no.

If you hadn’t become a photographer, what profession would you have chosen?
As I said before, as an adolescent I would have answered you: any profession, which would have permitted me to travel the world. Now, as a 34-year-old and new father, I would choose: maybe a restaurant waiter because I would see the happiness on the faces of the customers as they enter in the restaurant and as they eat. The chef doesn’t see them. It’s the waiter who pampers, gives advice and gets the feedback. He or she makes people content and welcome. It’s a wonderful feeling! When I go to a restaurant, I especially respect the waiters.

Your next projects?
More books, but I don’t know their subjects yet. Covers and photos for cover stories for the many magazines and brochures for the many restaurants I’ve already mentioned. I’m working with “Berberè” in Milano, one of their pizzerie in a chain all over Italy. When it’s possible,  I’ll be hopefully going to London take photos for “St. John Restaurant”.


A pipedream?
I’m very lucky; a lot of my pipe dreams have come true. I very content. My pipe dream is a bit utopian: to take the photographs for a book about the best chefs in the world. To travel all over the world to photograph all the best chefs. I’m emphatic, so what I enjoy most about my work is getting to know the people I photograph. I dream about spending time with Virgilio Martinez Vélix in Lima; Indian Gaggan Anan in Bangkok; Brazilian Alex Ataca of Irish and Palestinian origin in San Paolo; Grant Achatz, three-starred chef at “Alinea” in Chicago; and René Redzepi of Macedonian origin in Copenhagen.




Epilogue: since my October interview Blasetti has published the cover of a special issue about wine for Food & Wine (December), the photographs for an article about “Mamaròssa” “La cucina di montagna”, also for Food& Wine (December issue), and photographs an article about fats in meat for Gambero Rosso.  He has also taken photographs for the brands: Perrier, Espolòn Tequila, and Trenitalia and for the restaurant “Convivio Troiani” in Rome.

All the photographs in this article are Alberto Blasetti’s.