Pizza

From Past to Printed

Article

December 2025

There is no better way to look at our history than through the lens of our food. With pizza as the crisp canvas reflecting our history, identity, and future.

This story lives where art and insight meet.
We invite you to enter the world of See All This — Join those who journey deeper.

text: Louise O. Fresco
photography: Irving Penn

Humans are unique among animals because we eat our food as meals. We do not simply consume whatever edible items we encounter; instead, we produce the raw materials, prepare them, and consume them in countless ways, often in the company of others. From this, we draw our identity and moral values, both as individuals and as communities. Everything we eat carries a long history of origin, migration and transformation, shaped by knowledge, beliefs and convictions.

Across nearly every culture, staple foods follow a similar pattern, although the ingredients vary with local resources. At the core lies a trinity of carbohydrates (starch), protein and fat. Carbohydrates are provided by grains and tubers – mainly wheat, rice, corn, millet, potatoes, yams and cassava. Since the gradual development of agriculture more than twelve thousand years ago, these carbohydrates have been the main source of calories. They are often paired with beans – soybeans in China, lentils and chickpeas in the Middle East and India, and various local beans in Africa and Central America. This pairing is powerful: grains and beans contain complementary amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, making them more nourishing than when eaten separately. This was a significant evolutionary milestone for humankind.

Wheat starch is the most versatile of all carbohydrates: eaten unleavened or leavened, as bread, croissants, pancakes and coffee rolls, as well as Eastern European blinis, Indian naan and roti, or Turkish simit and, of course, pizza – an enduring icon of the evolution of our food.

Irving Penn (1917-2009) was one of Vogue’s leading photographers for more than sixty years. With a painter’s eye, he elevated the banal to the exquisite – especially in his food still lifes, where he was a perfectionist. ‘If we were photographing a hand holding a pizza, it had to be the pizza-maker’s hand,’ said his close collaborator Phyllis Posnick.