“Back in 2014 I’ve started working on the Still Diets series for the first time. Yesterday as today, the subjects and the story portrayed with these photos are in vogue as never before. The incredible work produced by the Old Masters of painting, especially Caravaggio, served as starting point. The importance of lights in every rim of my virtual canvas is a fundamental element of the composition. During the developing process another substantial inspiration came from the artworks of Dutch’s artist from the Gold Age, researching and studying those elements as symbols of vanity. The result is a mash-up of old and new, baroque and modern.”
“To visualize the unusual diets of celebrities or famous personalities is to transform legends into astonishing reality. Melting the legendary diets of public figures into baroque, still-life photographs that both bring these mythical anecdotes to life and aggrandize them further.
Each image consists of a table suspended in a black void, upon which elegant silverware, relevant decorative artifacts, and the food in question lay. Lit from above, each still life gains a dramatic, painterly feel, further transforming the banality of the food items into relics of eccentricity.
With their lighting, messy composition, and the overabundance of food and expensive trinkets, the images feel somewhat hedonistic, as if Bannino is adopting a critical position towards the lifestyles of the people we idolize. But the photographer believes that he is not working from a position of cynicism or criticism, he is merely following a historical art tradition in his works.