M&S Farm to Foodhall — Parmigiano Reggiano, Parma

M&S Farm to Foodhall — From Parma to Foodhall

For M&S Farm to Foodhall, I travelled to Parma in northern Italy with chef Tom Kerridge to document the people, place and traditional processes behind M&S Parmigiano Reggiano.

The story followed Tom as he met the makers, discovering first-hand how parmesan is produced and visiting the extraordinary maturation stores where thousands of wheels of cheese are carefully aged. Each wheel weighs around 40kg, and M&S currently sells the cheese matured for a minimum of 30 months.

One of the highlights was meeting cheesemaker Pasquale, who demonstrated the traditional process of opening a mature wheel of parmesan. Using the distinctive specialist parmesan knives, he carefully split the wheel by hand — a process designed to open the cheese along its natural structure rather than simply cutting through it. It was a brilliant moment to photograph, bringing together Tom's curiosity with Pasquale's knowledge and generations of cheesemaking tradition.

Photographically, the brief was about much more than documenting the cheese itself. The aim was to capture Tom's interactions with the makers, their knowledge and craft, the working environment and the remarkable scale of the ageing process — creating a genuine sense of the people and place behind a familiar M&S Foodhall product.

Working inside an active food-production environment also presented practical challenges. Strict biosecurity and food-safety procedures had to be observed throughout, while photography needed to work around the daily routines of the cheesemakers without disrupting production. This required a flexible, observational approach: anticipating moments, working quickly and responding to what was happening while still creating strong campaign imagery.

The resulting photography formed part of M&S Farm to Foodhall, connecting the product found on the shelf with its origins in Parma and telling the story of the makers, traditions and craftsmanship behind it.