A photographic approach to food and luxury

Alessandro Pugno, Creative Director at Ítaca walks us through our latest production for Cárnicas Joselito.

What is it? It’s a series of photographs of jamón, chorizo, salchichón, coppa and other Iberian delicacies.

And why does it exist? Because José Gómez Sánchez from Cárnicas Joselito asked us!

Right… but what did he ask exactly? Joselito wanted to revamp its image and update its photo archive with a distinct visual approach. There were no brief but one: the new photos had to be “unique” as possible – this is Joselito’s approach to everything.

What’s the format concept? Previous to this assignment, Andréa Chabant Sánchez and I worked extensively on the meaning of the Joselito brand and its vision. Fashion is a natural inspiration when it comes to approaching luxury, we gambled on an “editorial photography” approach like what you see in fashion and design magazines – but applied to food.

The idea was to merge the concept of essentiality with organicity, the world of nature with the world of luxury. 

What inspired you? The beauty of iberian products is that they originate from a tree, the encina or Mediterranean oak. This vegetal root is very present in its flavour. The other ingredient of Joselito is time: some pieces age for over 10 years. This process reminded me the one of precious metals like gold and silver that undergo a long and subtle transformation. Beyond time, seasonality is very important to Joselito. The products are not made all year-round, they follow the cycles of nature. We wanted to reflect that, like Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer collections for fashion labels.

Was there a visual or technical challenge you had to overcome? Combining the minimalism required in luxury with the elements of nature, they are opponents in visual terms. Nature and organic forms pushesphotography to the baroque, while luxury tends to colder and far form our concept of nature. The key was the art work and the choice of the elements in the composition: minimalist organic materials like rocks and wood.

You can check out the beginning of Joselito’s IG campaign using the photos.

They also wrote a blog post about it.