Mola di Bari, Puglia, Italy
I don’t photograph food.
I photograph memory in motion.
In Puglia, making tomato sauce is not a recipe—it is a ritual. It happens once a year, at the peak of summer, when tomatoes are at their fullest. Families gather. Hands move in rhythm. Time slows down.
I enter the scene quietly, letting the process unfold. Tomatoes are washed, cut, crushed. The air fills with heat, color, and scent. Red becomes the dominant language—intense, alive, almost tactile.
Steam rises.
Voices overlap.
Gestures repeat.
What interests me is not the final jar, but everything that leads to it—the collective movement, the shared effort, the continuity of a tradition passed down without being explained.
My approach remains close and instinctive. The frame isolates fragments within the whole: a hand pressing tomatoes, a surface stained with color, a moment of pause between actions.
Shot on Leica Q2 and Leica SL2, the visual language stays intimate and essential—preserving texture, warmth, and the density of the moment without interruption.
This is not just food preparation.
It is a ritual of time, held and repeated.
