FRANCESCO MATTUCHI
Suspended food photographer shares his ideas and secrets
Francesco Mattucci started taking photos as a child, and rediscovered his passion after the emergence
of digital cameras. “I’m an amateur... maybe an evolved amateur,” he says. In the last few years he’s begun trying to shift his passion into his job and has found an immense following on Instagram for his quirky images.
In particular, Francesco’s ‘kitchensuspension’ project has drawn legions of fans and gone viral on the internet, due to the images’ mindbending nature. How did you get the idea for the kitchensuspension project? Like many of my projects, the idea of kitchensuspension came to me by chance. The kitchen is probably the room I live in most. And I was thinking about this: about the time I spend here, how my family uses it, our needs…
I began to explore ways I could show this physical place and the needs it meets on a daily basis in a very simple way. And then I got the idea of using the kitchen as a set where things that inhabit it have a life of their own. How many images have you shot in this series? kitchensuspension is a project that I created solely for Instagram: all the images are published on an account I started for the project. There are approximately 220 images in the series, and it’s ongoing. How do you set up your shots, and how long does it take? It’s hard to give one answer. Setting up really depends on how complex my idea is, the composition, the weight of the food, the angle, so many things. Let’s just say that every shot in my series so far ranges from one hour to one day of setting up. Can you tell us how you ‘suspend’ your subjects? Are you using wires, or are you throwing them and using fast shutter speeds? There’s no throwing involved. Everything is suspended. It’s still-life in the air! The objects I use can be suspended or held in place in several different ways; it always depends on the subject. If it is a very lightweight subject, sometimes the objects can be held by very thin wires or if it’s a bit heavier I might use toothpicks. And sometimes I use my hands.
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to tell you too much about how I do it. I like keeping some mystery behind my images!
“Sometimes I’ll spend hours trying to be creative, and sometimes just opening the fridge is enough inspiration”
How do you choose which subjects to include in an image? This is the hardest part of my work. Since the ‘set’ is always (intentionally) the same, the only requirement is to photograph objects that are not that big. You have so many different items in your kitchen, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find something new.
I look for interesting colours and shapes. I look for items people will recognise. Sometimes I’ll spend hours trying to be creative but it just won’t work, and sometimes just opening the fridge is enough inspiration. How you decide upon your compositions? First I choose my subject. Then I get some paper and sketch several different possibilities. I look at them and see which works best. When I choose one I may tweak it a bit further, then set up my shot based on this drawing. Why do you use a low camera angle in all of your shots? For space and perspective reasons. By keeping the camera low, it’s easier to ‘detach’ the objects I’m shooting from the horizontal level. What sort of light are you using for your images? Nothing sophisticated at all! I’m using only the lights on the ceiling of my kitchen. I’ve really lucked out, because they’re perfect. What shutter speeds do you typically shoot at? On still subjects – which is what I’m shooting most of the time – I typically set a shutter speed of about 1/100 sec. But occasionally I will shoot something that is moving, and even though I’m just using the overhead lights in my kitchen, I can often reach shutter speeds of 1/1,000 sec without any problems with camera shake.