serving clients in london and beyond

Silvia Bifaro

photography, styling and art direction

I'm a passionate food photographer and former fashion designer.

hi! i'm silvia! welcome to my kitchen.

Though she runs her own business, my Mum still cooks everything from scratch. Her talent is unbelievable.

Both my mother and my father come from a very humble background and have shown by example what it means to have unwavering determination, a love for beauty, and an attention to details that some would call unnecessary. They have taught me that dedication and beauty can change anything ordinary into something extraordinary. They have given me a sense of love and care that has made all the difference in my life and in my kitchen.

Cooking in London, I’m lucky enough to get my ingredients from city farms and independent groceries that have radiant seasonal ingredients. I'm often found making a sourdough bread at home, roasting or juicing vegetables and always, religiously baking a cake or croissants on Sunday's.

If you’d like to take a seat and stay for a coffee, I’d tell you about my wild love for food and how I started my business as a food photographer.

So, why did I choose to be a food photographer?

Simply put, our lives revolve around the kitchen. It’s where we gather, cultivate community, host festive brunches for friends and leisurely teas for neighbors. It's the kitchen that brings joy and meaning to our homes.

My passion for food & life in the kitchen started when I was just a child, exploring my grandmother's farm under the summer sun. We would eat fried potatoes and tomato salads in the doozy shade of the kiwi pergola. The smell of her bread, fresh out of the wood stove, still lingers in my memory. And although my grandmother wasn't creative in the kitchen, she mastered the recipes that she did know to perfection and had a strong sense of ingredients and quality.

Because of her influence, I am drawn to natural, seasonal ingredients and enjoy eating prevalently whole foods with a strong Japanese influence. Miso and soba here live right next to linguine and “passata”. The love and the care associated with real, nutritious food first came from her. And witnessing my grandparents labor at the farm passed down to me a profound respect for our generous planet.

But it has been my Mum that has been the one to elevate the art of cooking in my life. She would transform a simple bowl of boiled vegetables into a majestic centerpiece for dinner, tint poached pears pink with red wine, flambé Crepe Suzette to perfection, and always serve up an incredibly outstanding dessert.

Before I was a photographer, I was a fashion designer in Milan. But, something in me missed having the full freedom to create. I decided to return to University and enroll in an evening course on professional photography. After just a few lessons, I was hooked.

I remember how freaking incredible it was to develop my first image in the darkroom. The fact that most of the lessons were still on film meant that I had to develop a deeper and more technical understanding of light.

Starting my food photography business wasn't easy. In fact, I started by falling flat on my face.

xx, silvia

Things didn’t pick up for quite a bit until they finally did. Good things take their time, says my mum.

When I finally received my first paid partnership, I was still in the early days of my career, with minimal experience. But I knew what would work. I had design experience and branding skills clear in my mind.

And though I was obviously terrified of having a crew from Nikon to film my process in my own small house, I came out of that experience fully knowing that I'd found my thing. This is where it all started.

My photography is a mix of elaborate pageant and personal inspirations. Both a mechanism for documenting the moment and memory retrieval. Putting my images on Instagram hasn’t influenced my aesthetic. It’s only given me the confidence to really trust my own taste, and the capacity to grow a passion into a business and a life I’m grateful for.

My journey into photography wasn’t a straightforward one. Rather, it was a journey of self awareness, of living out of my comfort zone. But, through the twists and turns, I learned that we have a new chance to forge our future off of the foundation we inherit from all of our past experiences...even the ones that weren't necessarily successful.

It has been these experiences that have forged within me the belief that knowledge is the fundamental wealth to changing our lives; that’s why I am ever so eager to use this website to share, with you, what I've learned, so you can start your creative journey too.

I hope to see you around here, to share some good food, beautiful images and, most of all, to enjoy each others company.

So, as a twenty-something young woman, I had left a promising career in fashion and put myself into beginner shoes again. I hustled. A lot. Even so, I struggled financially and even worked in a “gelateria.” It wasn't long before I felt overwhelmed by learning the trade while also managing to find enough jobs to pay the rent.

Scared and confused, I went back to work in an office. It's no surprise that a part of me felt frustrated. I didn't seem to fit in this lifestyle anymore. The freedom of being my own boss had secretly put its roots deep down in me, and that whispering voice only became louder and louder with time.

After living in London for a few years, listening to that voice, I took a leap of faith back into photography. At that point, I was a new mom of 2, and it finally became clear to me that all I wanted was to be creative and to work on my own terms from wherever I was.

I became determined to create this dream for myself. But I felt that I couldn’t start again as I did before, only taking on the lowest paying jobs or working endlessly as an assistant.

So I started to craft the portfolio for my dream jobs. And somehow, I found my place sharing this work on Instagram. It gave me the platform to communicate my photography in the moment of creation and to understand more immediately which techniques and compositions were most effective. I started to connect with amazing photographers and began to build a generous, supportive community of authentic human beings.

At that time, I was shooting hundreds of photos, and it was frustrating to see that my work was not that good. In fact, my photos didn’t reflect my vision for a long time. But I kept taking photos every time I could, every spare minute I had, my camera was in my hands. And out of hundreds, only a very few would make it to my grid.