Editorial
The Long Table
A feature on a canteen that has fed the same market district since 1946.
- Client
- Aperture Review
- Discipline
- Editorial
- Location
- Bologna, Italy
- Year
- 2023
The commission
The canteen serves two hundred covers a day from a kitchen the size of a garage, to porters, traders and, increasingly, to the people replacing them. Aperture Review commissioned a feature on what the room holds together.
We photographed four consecutive service periods from inside the kitchen and from the same corner table, so the feature reads as a single day rather than a collection of visits. Nothing was arranged; the only request we made was to be ignored.
The story ran across twelve pages and won the title's photography award for that year.
How it was made
Challenge
A working kitchen with no space to stand in, mixed and unflattering light, and a room where an obvious camera would have changed the behaviour we were there to record.
Approach
Four services, one small camera, one fixed lens, and three days on site before making a frame. Shooting from the same two positions throughout gave the edit its structure.
Result
A twelve-page feature and the title's photography award for the year. Prints of two frames now hang in the canteen itself.
Sequence
Credits
- Photography
- Atelier
- Words
- Tomas Bergh
- Editor
- Aperture Review