What Grandmas Around The World Cook

I love photography projects that explore different cultures of the world—like Julian Germain’s photos of classrooms from various countries, or Jan Banning’s photos of bureaucrats’ work desk. James Mollison’s photos make make us wonder where children’s sleep, or what they eat (photographed by Hannah Whitaker), or what they play with (photographed by Gabriele Galimberti).

This time Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti seeks out grandmothers and their love for good cooking. For two years Gabriele visited countless sweet grandmas from dozens of different countries to sample their favorite dishes. He had moose steak in Alaska, caterpillars in Malawi, hot spicy curry in India, shark soup in the Philippines, and many, many more exotic dishes. “I liked 90 percent of the recipes in the book,” he told Decisive Cravings.

The idea for the project came from Gabriele’s own grandmother. As Gabriele was preparing to leave Italy for his first international assignment as a documentary photographer, his grandmother was worried about what he would eat. She told him: “Are you sure you want to go? What are you going to eat in Africa? And in China? You should stay at home. I can cook for you.”

Gabriele replied, “You know grandma? There are many grandmothers all over the world and I’m sure they will be happy to feed me and cook something special for me.” And this is the how the seed for the idea was planted in Gabriele’s mind.