cibusphoto

The drawing is inside

A Sicilian cured-meat producer. In 2021 we photographed the range for their catalogue and their website: salami, capocollo, guanciale, pancetta coppata, porchetta, cooked ham, lardo.

Project
Salumificio Lipari
Year
2021
The Lipari knife slicing a pancetta coppata: the slice just cut shows its drawing

The brief

One commission with two destinations: the catalogue and the website. They sound like the same thing and they are not. A catalogue needs images that make you hungry and that sit well next to each other on a spread; a website needs products clean and isolated, so they can be lined up and reordered without anyone noticing. Knowing that up front means planning both into the same job, instead of rebuilding the set when the second request arrives.

The constraint

From the outside, a cured meat is a closed object: rind, string, the dust of the curing room, one single brown note. Everything there is to photograph is inside, and you only see it in the cut: the mosaic of a salame, the spiral of a pancetta coppata, the layers of a guanciale, the white of the lardo against its dark rind. Every piece in the range has its own drawing and no two are alike: that is where the photograph has to go. It is also the hardest thing on the set, because on the cut surface the brightest thing in the frame and the darkest meet, often two centimetres apart. Expose for the white of the fat and the rind closes into a black patch; expose for the rind and the fat blows out, and the drawing disappears anyway.

How we solved it

The whole set is built around the cut surface. The light comes in high and from behind and grazes across the board: grazing is the only direction that gives the fat relief instead of flattening it, and that keeps the drawing readable right to the edge of the slice. The board is worn and mid-toned, and it sits exactly between the white of the fat and the brown of the rind: that is where the exposure finds somewhere to land. The grey linen is the only cool note on the set, and it is what keeps all that warmth afloat. Then a decision that is about layout before it is about light: every board carries the whole piece and its slices — the closed object and what is inside it, in one photograph — with the cloth always in the same corner, so the catalogue assembles page after page without a single spread looking wrong. The slicing is done on set, in front of the camera, and the hands at work became the third series in the project: the same light as the boards, only closer. The salame range has a set of its own — light ground, product upright, shadow kept to a minimum, nothing around it — because on a website those files have to line up, change position and hold on whatever background is put behind them.

What we delivered

  • Board shots: every photograph carries the whole piece and its slices
  • The cut photographed close, with the hands at work
  • The salame range in packshot on a light ground, upright and alignable
  • The same layout repeated across the range, so the catalogue assembles
  • Files for catalogue print and files for the website

Where the images ended up

  • Product catalogue
  • Website
  • A whole salame in its Lipari paper band, a half and slices on a wooden board
  • Slices of lardo and the whole piece with its dark spiced rind, grazing light on the wood
  • Hands slicing a capocollo, the first slice still on the blade

    Here the subject is not the piece but the surface just opened: the light grazes it so the lean of the capocollo takes relief instead of going flat.

  • Slices of guanciale, layered red and white, beside the whole piece tied with string
  • Folded slices of cooked ham beside the whole piece, on the board with the linen cloth
  • Spiral slices of pancetta coppata beside the whole pieces, tied with string

    Every board carries the whole piece and its slices, with the cloth always in the same corner. The same layout repeated across the range is what lets the catalogue be assembled page after page.

  • Slices of porchetta and the whole piece with its golden crackling, tied with string
  • A Lipari apron and hands slicing a herb-rolled porchetta
  • Thin loose salamini and the vacuum-packed Lipari pack, on the board
  • Packshot of the Piccante artisan salame in its Lipari band, on a light ground

    For the website the ground changes: product upright, shadow kept to a minimum, nothing around it. They have to line up, reorder and move without coming back to the photographer.

  • Packshot of the pistachio artisan salame in its Lipari band
  • Packshot of the Don Alfio black-pork salame in its Lipari band
  • Packshot of the almond artisan salame in its Lipari band

More work

Back to work

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