Empathy literally means “to feel inside”. And it takes very little to understand what the people in Livigno “feel inside” when they talk about their traditions and their past.
I clearly felt their strong, overflowing passion the first time the chefs and pastry cooks group called me asking for advice on how to make a cook book based on the local traditions.
From the start, the shared goal was to create a book which did justice to the authentic emotions that this valley arouses, integrating written accounts with photographic documentation which had the power to recreate the atmosphere surrounding the fornèla (the kitchen range) more than a century ago.
Thanks to an incredible collection job of “local antiquities” it has been possible for us to be in touch with old feelings and to listen to the tales that each object had to tell – we were thus able to recreate the right atmosphere for photo settings – in an old stable – surrounded by the people who lived the everyday life of the past.