Slow Life

By Cristy Meiners, producer

Since Douglas Gayeton is a multi-media artist, he couldn’t simply take pictures at a family luncheon and leave it at that.  Instead, in one afternoon he shot thousands of pictures, recreated the scene in a collage, wrote all over the images, and then made an on-line film explaining the process!  Check out his video here.

Gayeton’s idea for his book Slow Life in a Tuscan Town started from that snap-happy luncheon.  Once he realized that he could share what he calls “flat stories” (a number of pictures collaged into a single image) with his photographs, he began documenting his neighbors, friends, and family’s dedication to local eating and organic farming.  Pistoia, Italy, where Gayeton was living, has a long tradition of growing their own produce and producing their own food.  Like many small towns, they’ve had to; after all, the big grocery stores have never quite made it to where they live.  As a result, this small community exemplified the ideals of the Slow Food movement, which was started in Italy in 1986 as a reaction against American fast food and all its problems.  Here’s what the Slow Food website states is their mission:

“Slow Food is good, clean and fair food. We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work.” (http://www.slowfood.com/about_us/eng/philosophy.lasso)