"At first glance, this photographic gallery of daily life in Pistoia may be mistaken for a journey back in time. The sepia-toned photographs of rural people tending a vineyard or a chicken or a hand of cards, of local butchers and cheese makers, tell the story of artist and filmmaker Gayeton's journey forward into a community still connected to its land. It is a place where olives are still picked by hand, a peasant wisdom sometimes wins out over modern technology, and the production of food and culinary tradition is integral to the character of its people.

Gayeton expresses and celebrates the intimacy of that relationship with his stunning photographs that are artfully annotated in playful script, making each photograph a story of its own."

SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town is a fine achievement blending a personal journey into Tuscany with discussions of the basics of the Slow Food movement. Words and pictures are used to create a narrative on this movement,, journeying from a small town outside of Florence where mushroom hunters and sheep farmers dominate to recipes, handwritten travel notes, culinary facts, and more.

The visual and written approach is homestyle culinary history at its best: perfect for any international cooking library."

"Gayeton's book is full of characters such as Cecchini, each captured in stunning sepia photographs. The danger of a visually dazzling large-format book such as Slow is that the nuances of the story are eclipsed. Gayeton is adamant that Slow is not a coffee-table book where you can dip in and out, but rather a story with a beginning, middle and an end. Perhaps it can be both — and just like slow food, it takes time to get to that moment of understanding. But you are better off for having made the extra effort."

"There are two kinds of food books—those that take on a sauce-splattered patina and a permanent place above the stove, and those that sit on the coffee table, a visual reminder to guests that their host is serious about food. SLOW is definitely among the latter, although it stands out primarily because it's impossible to blithely flip through.

Douglas Gayeton has created a new kind of food book, one that demands that readers stop on every page, examine each arresting photo carefully and find the hidden gems lurking within the frame. He does this by literally writing the stories of Tuscans atop sepia-toned photographs catching them in the act of raising, foraging for, preparing and eating food. Not every image depicts the act of consuming (we also meet a cobbler, a few chatty men on a street corner and a handful of other locals), but the most engrossing are those that capture culinary artisans--butchers, pasta masters, winemakers, all trapped in time and bound by tradition. It's as good of a gift as any we can think of, although don't expect the recipient to look up for a while."

"In an absorbing culinary and cultural journey, well-known photographer and multi-media artist Douglas Gayeton illustrates the underlying essence of the slow-food movement and the authentic nature of domestic Italian life.

He presents expressive and anecdotal photographs, stories, and carefully selected text to slowly introduce us to thte locals of Pistoia, a region in Tuscany, Italy, whose lives are interwoven in the process of growing, preparing, and eating food. Everyday rhythms of life become fascinating as we meet and learn about each family member and friend, local baker and butcher, local cheese maker and chocolate maker. With each story, their connections to the land and resulting thousand-year old traditions rae revealed, giving us precious insight into a more organic way of living.

Beginning with a single photographs as his guide, Gayeton's person search for his Italian family proves amusing and passionately genuine. Each photograph is taken in an effort to define and give life to every individual; by fusing multiple photographs together he creates a panoramic perspective, showing us in one image what we would normally experience over several seconds or minutes in real time. In this way, Gayeton's method of documenting a moment in time, while telling a story, creates a book that is rich and compelling.

"In Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town, filmmaker, photographer and writer Douglas Gayeton has created an unusual visual foray into Pistoia, a small Italian town near Florence where he went in search of a soulful connection with the culture, the people, the land—and his own life. With introductions by Carlo Petrini (founder of the Slow Food movement) and renowned chef Alice Waters, Gayeton's personal photographic journey comprises sepia-toned images of Pistoia's people, places and food—pictures that are layered composites of multiple photographs taken over minutes and hours. Compressed in this way, Gayeton's insightful pictures form a timeline and tell a story more effectively than any single still photograph could do.

The images are made even more powerful and memorable through the author's moving, often amusing anecdotal essays and the captions, quotes, commentary and recipes that are hand-scrawled upon the photos. Slow celebrates an intimate connection with a rural Italian landscape and the people living upon it, who are engaged in the timeless pleasures of growing, preparing and eating good, wholesome food.

"Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town (Welcome Books, $50) is an oversized book with photographs and text by Douglas Gayeton depicting people, places, and food in Pistoia, Tuscany. Gayeton's photographs are layered with handwritten notes, anecdotes, recipes, and historical facts. Upon opening the book, you enter into the world of food as seen through the lives of the people of Pistoia, whose culture revolves around the pleasure of growing, preparing, and eating food.

What makes Gayeton's photographs remarkable is that they are comprised of multiple photographs taken over the course of times ranging from ten minutes to several hours. "With this process," says Gayeton, "I have managed to introduce the concept of time, both compressed and exploded, into my work." Slow Food guru Alice Waters contributes the introduction. After reading and looking through this book, you may want to give serious thought to heading for Tuscany."

"Astonishing annotated pictures of everyday Italy"

"If you love beautiful books, Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town by Douglas Gayeton will be irresistible...This is both a personal narrative and one that — as great art must do — transcends and transforms the specific experiences portrayed. Spectacular."

"Photo-rich...a celebration of Tuscan food traditions, Slow Food-style."

"Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town is a pictorial narrative of Pistoia and its inhabitants that seeks to explain the Slow Food movement in photographs and marginalia, playfully, even fancifully, like a modern illuminated manuscript."

"Douglas Gayeton's Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town is pornography for the Heat-reading set. It is the Slow Food movement brought to art. It is a series of portraits of a rural town in Italy where Gayeton lived, worked, cooked, fell in love, and took pictures—tons of pictures, many of which were then stitched together and inscribed with captions, names, anecdotes, and recipes to tell his story of assimilation. It is also, to be frank, a heavy-ass tome—Peter Mayle would probably throw it against a wall out of envy, if he could pick it up."

"Gradually revealing insight into a more organic way of living, Gayeton's rich fusion and layering of images pulls us into a fascinating culinary and cultural journey."

"[A] lovely book...Gayeton's collection of candid sepia-toned images and heartfelt text bring this adventure to life in a manner that makes you yearn to follow in his footsteps."

"Douglas Gayeton invites us to the fields, barns, butcher shops, and dinner tables where he learned how to live and eat in the Tuscan countryside. Inspired by pre-Renaissance narrative paintings, the filmmaker stitched together dozens of evocative, large-format sepia photographs capturing scenes of daily rural life in Pistoia. He then etched them with marginalia and centuries-old Tuscan proverbs...His sumptuous chronicle leaves us hungry for more."

"Gayeton's personal search for his Italian family proves amusing and passionately genuine...[his] method of documenting a moment in time, while telling a story, creates a book that is rich and compelling."

"Slow...is part painting, poem, and film, rich with mouthwatering detail. It's a satisfying and simultaneously hunger-inducing portrait of living close to the land, in sync with nature."

"Gayeton has captured the gastronomic heart and soul of an Italian village, then shared it through sepia-toned photographs."

"Colorful vignettes full of elan and earthy photographs chalked with script reveal Italian traditions against backdrops of medieval architecture and pastoral serenity."

"A riveting story"

"This truly is edible food for thought"

"With a combination of arresting portraits and personal handwritten anecdotes from his journey through the heart of Tuscany, Gayeton has created a charming and riveting story: a 'flat film' that celebrates the principles of the Slow Food movement and the people whose lives are devoted to growing, preparing and eating food. A beautiful addition to your coffee table."

"This is a sumptuous and utterly captivating book with many spectacular sepia-toned 4-color images and gatefolds."

"Here at Slow Food we have delighted in watching Douglas Gayeton's growing body of work documenting the slow lives of farmers and ordinary people. These photographs are rich and undeniably authentic, and could only have been made by someone with a deep sensitivity and understanding that goes beyond the boundaries of nations and languages, and represents the principles at heart of the Slow Food movement.

In fact, when we held Slow Food's first major event in the US this past September, Slow Food Nation in San Francisco attended by 85,000 people, we supported the first exhibition of Gayeton's photographs. The tremendously positive response to the show received leaves us no doubt that his plans to publish them in a book will also find a wide and passionate audience.

We look forward to following the book's progress and would love to have a look at it before it goes to press. Again, we wish you the best of luck with this project."

"Douglas Gayeton walked into my butcher shop, and I discovered an artist.. An artist-photographer, an innovative Creative who has something of the miraculous in the way he senses the subject, for his capacity to get inside us with clear perception, and with humanity. Douglas builds on the truth, expanding the space in a scene of everyday life, he animates it with personalities, furnishings, objects and atmosphere. He sought out genuine Tuscan characters, he took time to understand them. And here they are. As a collar or halo, he notes their names, as an apron; their life stories hand-written as is befitting to ancient, eternal things. Each scene is entitled with proverbs or Tuscan sayings, highlighting our foods, breads and meats. He offers up his creations steeped in sepia tones, with the flavour of old daguerreotypes. For the passion he puts into his work, and for how he depicted my butcher shop, a simple thank you is not enough."

"SLOW is a major accomplishment in visual storytelling—one of those rare works so crammed with life that it's difficult to classify. Personal narrative? Cookbook? Travelog? All and none. By whatever door you enter whatever path you take, SLOW's warmth of spirit and manifest love of place will inspire new ways to look around and truly connect."

"This gorgeous book captures the essence of what we now call Slow Food, food perfectly attuned to the land and culture that produce it. One look at it makes me want to get on the next plane to Tuscany."

"Not too long ago the entire planet lived on Slow Food. Today life in the fast lane zips by blurring the fact that real food produced in natural ways enjoyed with family and friends is a blessing we need and should all heed. It's immediately clear that Douglas Gayeton's Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town is the result of a decade of personal research. It unfolds from a unique recipe combining artful images, insightful impressions, and intimate stories about his own culinary slow food odyssey in a small Italian town.

Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town is a photo book that feels like a warm, friendly, home movie by a talented artist who isn't afraid to share embarrassing moments as well as authentic insights. It's quite delicious in a visual, visceral and cerebral sense."

"SLOW: Life in a Tuscan Town gives us a visual and written window on a rapidly disappearing world, ruled by the land, the seasons and simple interactions. Industrialized food is breaking the web that connects us intimately to what we eat at a cost to our health and our environment."

An ideal addition to any coffee-table book collection, this tome features gorgeous sepia-tone photographs and evocative writing that take readers on a journey through Tuscany by way of food.

"A timely, elegant and innovative work from one of the most creative prolific savant thinkers I know. Every time I turn around, Douglas emerges, after having spelunkered below the cultural radar, with a body of work, whether it be a film, writings, or images that capture the true essence of the subject matter he chooses to indulge. In short, always ahead of the curve. SLOW is a treasure trove of "life images" from what could very well be the beginnings of the most thought provoking movement in food gathering that we have seen."