The cultural and symbolic function of food and drink served at table finds knowledgeable people in quite different fields in agreement, ranging from Claude Lévy-Strauss, a father of anthropology, to Pellegrino Artusi, author of La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (1891), the renowned treatise on gastronomy constituting a milestone in the history of traditional Italian cuisine.
Not by chance, two towering figurers of Western culture wrote texts with titles deriving from a situation where food and drink are shred: Plato with his Symposium and Dante with the Banquet. The elaboration of nutritional substances, in differentiating us from animals, characterises us as human beings; the giddy variety of ingredients and processes involved culminates at the time of consumption when food and drink is served at table, whether a solitary meal or sumptuous banquet.
The table is precisely what the extraordinary sampling of pictures contained in this book is devoted to. Taken in a wide variety of countries around the world by Massimo Listri with his infallible eye and equally infallible photographic equipment, the skill of the shots, perfection of the light, and harmonious warmth ad coolness of the colures make every photograph a silent tale with a different protagonist: now we have the suspended poetry of an exotic environment with sand and palms; now the precious evidence of objects; now the triumphant vitality of fruit and vegetables, now the quiet solemnity of a room that is practically a museum- and yet more…