Sweet Bitter studies the radicchio in an unfolding collage of its forms

The photographer Anna-Sophia John often finds herself focusing on the mundane – “picking things out of everyday life” to capture. What drew the London-based creative to the humble leaves of the radicchio for her latest image making venture was a cultural obsession with food becoming “a trend item and a status symbol”, she says. “We are becoming increasingly aware of the quality of the produce we consume and in many ways, I think these beautiful radicchios are the perfect example of this.”

Over the last year food has certainly had its cultural moment – showing up in all corners of our creative work, as Elizabeth Goodspeed investigated in a recent column. Now a luxury good, signal of style and status rather than just sustenance, the ravishing radicchio might be a perfect example of the bourgeoisie of leafed vegetables, although it is commonly mistaken for cabbage, which makes for a more down to earth dish.

Anna’s series of close up studies of these luxury lettuces were collated into Spicy Bitter an unfolding, “vibrant collage of its many forms”. Another collaboration in a long line of projects centring printed matter with graphic designer Riccardo Carrara, the publication turned this body of work into a “tactile dialogue between colour, texture, and obsession”, fittingly opened with an essay from Logan Brown, written from the point of view of a radicchio being put into a compost bin.

“We’ve always been passionate about the medium of the self-published photo book. When we decided to turn this body of images into a book, we knew the design needed an element of playfulness,” says Riccardo. “In 2018, Anna bought a copy of MDAM – Plantation Journal by Alix Marie at Off Print, and we were drawn to its layering of visual and tangible textures. We also love Stephen Gill’s work, his books balance creativity and craftsmanship with a sense of play.”

All of these references fed into the publications form but the pair’s main design inspiration was actually the vegetable itself. That’s why no two pages of the photobook are the same: “The different-sized pages mimic the vegetable’s irregularities, and flipping through them mirrors the act of peeling back its leaves. The colours in the book also echo the deep red and soft yellow found in the photographs,” Anna tells us. The photographers up-close angles of the lettuces leaves are even more abstracted in print, transforming the vegetable into something painterly and beautiful but also alien and unfamiliar.

To celebrate the launch of this catalogue of cropped forms, Anna and Riccardo collaborated with close friends Giorgio Del Buono and Simone Sicchia from the supper club 926.1. to throw a Radiccio themed dinner – an event quite fitting for the occasion. “Giorgio and Simone really embraced the concept of a radicchio-themed menu, and the constraint led to some truly inspired dishes,” shares Riccardo. The tables were topped off with set designer and stylist Dominika Opalena’s work and the designer Sam Jay’s curated playlist was the soundtrack to a long evening of, well… eating radicchio in an array of forms.