Street photography or Voyeurism?

   Voyeurism is defined as the derivation of sexual satisfaction by watching people secretly, especially when those being watched are undressed or engaging in sexual activity. This too, in a way could be related to street photography, no the public caught on camera in the streets are usually not engaging in any sexual act but there is still a sense of voyeurism within this act. 
Many street photographers enjoy capturing the public when they think no one is looking, so that they capture real people carrying out real acts, no one is playing up to the camera. This could be defined as the photographer gaining pleasure from looking at people who do not know they are being watched. 


   Some people could argue that street photography is not the same as voyeurism because although many street photography images include people they are not the main point of focus, the image would still probably have been taken anyway, if the people were not there. Voyeurism is usually about an individual person carrying out particular activities, street photography is not about prying into someone's life but rather about a moment in time, a split second where everything comes together. Yes some street photographers do pin point on certain individuals, such as Bruce Gilden who actively looks out for interesting people to photography, but this differs from voyeurism as he does not watch them for a long period of time and take many photo's. Gilden thrusts his camera into their face for a split second to get his image and then he is away, he is hardly 'watching' them or capturing them during an intimate moment. 

   So what is street photography? One way in which street photography could be defined is the exploration of the relationship between form, colour and placement, one moment is captured, what happens within the frame at that split second is what street photography is about. A lot of the time people are caught within this frame but as I mentioned earlier they are not the main focus, they are mere objects within a larger scene. 


   I feel that some street photography is more voyeuristic then others, for example Bruce Gilden is an example of this, where his photography is all about the people and he is very much so imposing himself onto them. Another photographer who's work is similar to this is Christophe Agou. 

Agou completed a series entitled Life Below which consisted of images that he took on the New York underground. This work too could be considered to have elements of voyeurism, many of the subjects that he photographed where unaware of what he was doing. I feel that Agou's work is more voyeuristic than Gildens, as Agou actually sat with these people and watched them for a while before photographing them. But still I feel that neither of these works are truly voyeuristic, no images have been taken for anyone's sexual pleasure. I suppose you could say that everyone has a slight trace of voyeurism in them, most people enjoy watching others and are quite nosy, if you saw someone's curtains open and could see into their living room would you look? 
In this sense you should call everyone a voyeur as we all on a day to day basis watch other people and enjoy it. 

New York Gallery Visits.

International Centre of Photography. 


The first gallery that we visited whilst in New York was the International Centre of Photography, there were a few exhibitions on at this time offering a range of different photography under one roof. The main exhibition that was on was the Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour entitled The Mexican Suitcase. This series contains 4,500 35mm negatives from the Spanish civil war in 1936-1939, these images were considered lost since 1939 until today where they are being displayed here and are the most famous group of recovered negatives of the twentieth century. These three photographers all worked in Spain whilst living in Paris during this time, they are considered to be some of the most influential modern war photographers of our time. 

As the images were lost, no contact sheets were recovered, therefore these films show us the actual order in which the images were conceived and shot, every single image that each photographer took during this war is exhibited here, no edits were made. 
There was such a large amount of work on display here, offering us three different perspectives on one war, images that had been lost in time, finally being displayed for all to see. 
I really enjoyed the rawness of this exhibition, the strips of negatives displayed on the walls and some enlarged and printed straight onto the wall, this allowed us to see every detail of each image. This exhibition was particularly interesting to me as documentary is my chosen genre within photography, and I particularly love war photography. The reason I love war photography is because it allows you to see into a world that you are unfamiliar with, you hear about war in the news but sometimes this can be a biased view or limited in some way. War photographers often are right where the action is, capturing what the civilians are seeing and going through something that may be missed out within the news. This links to the lecture that we had on documentary forms, and asks the question that is common with all documentary photography, are these images the truth? These images differ to other war photographs as these have never been published and of course have been lost for many years. As the images have been displayed in this gallery as strips of negatives we can see that these images are the truth. Many war images we see are in newspapers, where they may have been cropped or edited in order to portray a certain message to the audience. These images offer us the reality as to what was happening during this war, although we cannot say totally that these images have no been constructed. Obviously the photographer themselves chose what they wanted to photograph and how they composed the images but they are some of the most accurate representations of this war. 
Another exhibition that interested me within this gallery was Jasper, Texas by Alonzo Jordan, this was a collection of images taken by Jordan who was initially a barber but took up photography and actively documented the world he lived and worked in. Jasper is a small quiet town in East of Texas which was shocked to be the place of the most brutal race crime in U.S history, in 1998 49 year old James Byrd, JR. was dragged to his death by three white men in a pick up truck. Jordan's work created images that affirmed the identities of his subjects, enabling them to see themselves as individuals in the context of the social fabric of family and community. Jordan's images offered us an insight into the black community during the 1950's and Jordan actually took James Byrd, JR graduation photograph. 

Alonzo Jordan showed us the happy, care free together black community that was later to be shocked with this horrendous race crime. 
The last exhibition that interested me in a critical way was a series of images from photographer Wang Qingsong When Worlds Collide. This was the first U.S. solo show of the Beijing artist, one of China's most influential contemporary artists. Qingsong creates large scale scenes involving dozens of models and built sets, they combine references to classic Chinese art with ironic nods to China's new material wealth and rapidly growing consumer culture. Qingsong makes references to this consumer culture through placing Coke cans and other well known brands within his images. This links to the lectures we had on popular culture and globalisation, globalisation can be defined as growth to a global or worldwide scale; "the globalization of the communication industry". Qingsong is using his photography to make witty references to the impact of globalisation and modernisation in China, whilst still referencing art history. 
The image below is making a direct reference to popular culture, obviously the Mcdonalds and Coke signs represent Western consumerism. It appears as if the West are larger then China and are bombarding them with their fast food restaurants and brand drinks, China are pleading with them to stop which represents Qingsong pleading to hold on to the traditional Chinese ways. 

Format Festival.

Trent Parke. 
After our visit to Derby for the Format Festival there was one artist that particularly stood out to me, Trent Parke is a Australian street photographer who is part of the Magnum photography group. Parke has won a numerous amount of awards for his photography including the world press photo award in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005. 

I have included some examples of his work here, in order to demonstrate what it is that attracts me to Parke's work. Parke is considered to be one of the most innovative photographers of his time, his work consists of his documentation of Sydney streets, he captures the streets in a completely different way to any we have ever seen before. 
Parke began to photograph like this when he was 20 years old and first moved to Sydney, at this time he was dealing with a lot of issues on his own such as the lonliness he was dealing with having of moved to Sydney alone and did not know the city very well. 
Most documentary and street photographers aim to capture their city quite objectively, and let the city speak for itself, the interesting thing about Parke is that he always tries to channel his personal emotions through his photography. This causes the work to be more personal, instead of just seeing a city scene, we are seeing a city scene seen from a certain perspective. This relates to the gaze in some way, as the viewers of the photographs we have no choice as to what we see, whereas Parke as the photographer is in total control over the gaze. He can choose exactly what we see and how we see it, as I mentioned earlier Parke channels his emotions into his work so therefore if he is feeling depressed he will turn his gaze to scenes within the city that may portray this unhappy feeling. 

As you can see from all the examples that I have included Parke's work can take on very different looks and feels. The first selection of images are full of vibrant colour, Parke has really taken advantage of what he had around him here. These images are depicting a very sunny, bright and lively Sydney, full of life and soul, Parke was obviously feeling very positive during this time and wanted the viewers to feel this too through his imagery. The colours are so vibrant within these images they almost look like they have been created digitally, the images jump off the page at you and make you want to be there. I find the way in which Parke uses the available light very impressive, the shadows created help to give the image more depth and feel. This too works well with his black and white photography, these images have a darker more sombre feel to them, and compared to the first set of images show a very different side to Sydney.
I feel that Parke uses his photography in order to deal with his own personal issues, similar to the idea that when you feel sad you like to listen to sad music, when Parke is down he likes to take images that represent this. Perhaps he uses the photography to overcome these feelings and when he looks back over his images it helps him to not go through those emotions again. 
I find it extremely impressive that one photographer can create such different but equally beautiful work, such different emotions are brought to the surface when looking at Parke's work, you can really relate to his work and feel what he was feeling at that time.  

Jenn Ackerman.

Trapped.   

The continuous withdrawal of mental health funding has turned jails and prisons across the nation into the default mental health facilities.”

Jenn Ackermann is one of my main influences within photography and I truely love her work. She completed this series entitled ‘Trapped’ in 2008, and wanted to document the mental health crisis in America, the US has a very open attitude towards mental health and everyone seems to be in councelling or on medication. Ackermann wanted to get deeper into the issue and photographed inside the correctional psychiatric treatment unit in Kentucky. Ackermann wanted to show how mental illness inmates are dealt with inside prisons, obviously prisons are not the best places to treat them but Ackermann demonstrates through her images just how the prison is dealing with it. Jenn Ackermann did not want to show the inmates in any particular light and kept objectivity through out the project, she concentrated more on documenting the treatment processes and how the inmates are cared for within the prisons. 

Ackermann ensured that she documented all aspects of her time spent in the prison, ensuring that we saw all sides to the story, the good and the bad. With this body of work Ackermann has documented the issue of mental health within prisons, this touches on the moral issues too such as being insane is not a crime, but letting them hurt other people and themselves is, so how should the guards treat the inmates, as criminals or as patients? 

Ackermann has documented this issue very creatively, the image above is a great example of this. Ackermann has exhaggerated the image by using blur, I feel she has done this in order to demonstrate how this person may be feeling and to show his frantic and scared state. The way he is looking at us emphasises this further, he has a scared and vunerable look about him, like he is looking to us for help, the fact that we can see the bars he is behind makes the image harder to look at. You feel a sense of guilt, not being able to help this man at all and this creates an almost uncomfortable atmosphere around this image. The way that this image has been composed leaves it open to many interpretations, you are left wondering what is happening here, why does he appear so distressed. It leaves it up to your imagination. 

These two images work in a similar way to the first, left up to us as the viewers to interpret what is actually happening here, especially in the top image as it is difficult to see what is written on the pages. It is unclear as to whether or not it makes sense at all but must be of importance as this man is wanting to show them to us. 

The way in which the subject is displaying the papers to us is rather interesting, the way he is holding them up along with his facial expression appears quite intimidating. It is as if he is trying to prove something to us, or he is perhaps justifying his crime. The top image is one of my favourites, what works particularly well for me is the connection between the subject and the photographer, as the subject is looking straight into the camera there is no escaping his gaze. 

The use of black and white within all these images works effectively as it offers us no distractions, if these images were to be in colour I feel that they may have become too busy. The second image here is already rather busy and if colour was thrown into the mix the image would become a lot harder to read. Again Ackermann has used blur here to exaggerate motion and chaos. I feel it works well throughout the body of work that Ackermann has used different methods in order to capture her images. This stops people from becoming bored and keeps people on their toes whilst looking through, it also represents some of the franticness that happens within the prison itself. Being there I am sure that there is not many moments of peace and stillness, I feel that Ackermann’s images demonstrate this well, having the mix of still quiet images as well as the frantic chaotic images. 

I find this to be a very powerful image, it reminds us that these patients are locked up and seperated from us. The composition of this image is what I find to be most endeering, it is particularly effective how we are looking at him through and window whilst he is looking out of his own window. He is looking outside wishing he was out there whilst we are looking at him inside from the outside, it is like we are almost looking at each other but from a different angle. There are a lot of  shapes within this image, the shapes from all the signs above the window, the square window we are looking through and the long rectangle window the patient is looking through. 

The use of black and white too in this image is also very interesting, there is a constant jump from black and then to white, from the notices on the door to the door itself and then finally the white room, white clothes and black man. The blackness of the door and the whiteness of inside the room makes it appear almost like we, on the outside are bad and the person on the inside is good. This is due to the connotations you associate with white and black, black being evil and white being pure, this is interesting as in fact if anyone is ‘bad’ here it is in face he who is in prison. All of Ackermann’s images have quite an distressing and heartbreaking atmosphere to them, these people are almost helpless, some of them perfer to be in prison as its safer for them whilst others do not understand why they are there. Some of the images bring out a sense of guilt within you, whilst others just make you feel uncomfortable, the image above makes me personally feel sad, I just want to give this man a hug and tell him that everything will be ok but I know that I cannot. This relates to the idea of the gaze and scopophilia, we are watching people and getting enjoyment out of it, of course not in a sexual way but this image in particular reminds me of it. Especially as we are looking through a window, it makes me feel guilty for looking at him without him knowing, the image makes me feel almost voyeuristic. 

This being a documentary project brings about some critical issues such as whether the photographer remained objective throughout the project. This depends on whether or not the photographer intended to remain objective, within this particular body of work I feel that Ackerman needed to be, she was wanting to document how the patients are treated and cared for within the prison. I feel that the images we see above are the truth, especially working with mental health patients it would be extremely difficult to ask them to convey certain emotions etc. Ackerman said that she often found herself having to remind herself that these men are actually criminals, even though they may not have been completely conscious to what they were doing they still committed crimes. I can relate to this as I often found myself forgetting that these men were prisoners, and started to feel sorry for a lot of them. 

Critical Studies Lecture Six.

Globalisation. 


Definitions of globalisation: 

• Socialist- The process of transformation of local or regional phenomena, into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together. This process is a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural and political forces.
• Capitalist- The elimination of state-enforced restrictions on exchanges across borders and the increasingly integrated and complex global system of production and exchange that has emerged as a result. 
• ‘Covering a wide range of distinct political, economic, and cultural trends, the term “globalization” has quickly become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of contemporary political and academic debate. In popular discourse, globalization often functions as little more than a synonym for one or more of the following phenomena: the pursuit of classical liberal (or “free market”) policies in the world economy (“economic liberalization”), the growing dominance of western (or even American) forms of political, economic, and cultural life (“westernization” or “Americanization”), the proliferation of new information technologies (the “Internet Revolution”), as well as the notion that humanity stands at the threshold of realizing one single unified community in which major sources of social conflict have vanished (“global integration”)’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• George Ritzer coined the term 'Mcdonalization' to describe the wide ranging sociocultural processes by which the principles of the fast food restaurants are dominating a wide sector of the world. 
• Marshall McLuhan Rapidity of Communication echoes the senses. We can experience instantly the effects of our actions on a global scale.
• The Internet we live in an electrical age, our world evolves around the internet, the internet would render individualism obsolete and corporate interdependence. 
• The new cold war: Religious nationalism confronts the secular state. 
• Ideologies of religious nationalism and globalisation:  

      Self society:            RN - Communal                     G - Unit in global market. 

      Knowledge:             RN - Faith                                G - Media. 

      Religion:                  RN - Church/ State joined.    G - Religion irrelevant. 

      Politics:                   RN - Authoritarian/ Personal     G - Superpower (US) transnat'l     agencies

     Economy:                RN - Local capitalism or socialism    G - Transnational corporate

• Three problems with gloabisation: 
• Sovereignty - Challenges to the idea of the nation-state. 
• Accountability - Transnational forces and organisations, who controls them?
• Identity - Who are we? Nation, group, community. 
• Cultural Imperialism- If the 'global village' is run with a certain set of values then it would not be so much an integrated community as an assimilated one.
• Key thinkers: Schiller and Chomsky. 
• News corporations divide the world into 'territories' of descending market importance. There is -North America, -Western Europe, Japan and Australia, -Developing economies and regional producers India, China, Brazil, Eastern Europe, -The rest of the world.
• US media power can be thought of as a new form of imperialism. Local cultures destroyed in this process and new forms of cultural dependency shaped, mirroring old school colonialism.
• Schiller-  dominance of US driven commercial media forces US model of broadcasting onto the rest of world but also inculcates US style consumerism in societies that can ill afford it!    
• Chomsky & Herman (1998) ‘Manufacturing Consent’ 
• Chomsky & Herman (1998) Propaganda model- 5 basic filters. 
• 1. Ownership. Rupert Murdoch selected media interests. News of the World, The Sun, Sunday Times, Times, NY post, Sky, Fox TV. 
• 2. Funding. 
• 3. Sourcing. 
• 4. Flak. US-based Global Climate Coalition (GCC) Comprising fossil fuel and automobile companies such as Exxon, Texaco and Ford. The GCC was started up by Burson-Marsteller, one of the world's largest public relations companies, to rubbish the credibility of climate scientists and 'scare stories' about global warming. Flak is characterized by concerted and intentional efforts to manage public information.
• 5. Anti communist ideology. Hate Britain (Western) ideology.
• 'An Inconvenient Truth' 2006 Al Gore film about the effect of Global Warming. Gore encourages us to stop the raising temperature by releasing less C02, plant more vegetation, try to be more C02 neutral, recycle, buy a hybrid vehicle. 
• Sustainability. sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ Brundtland Commission, (1987) ‘Our Common Future’ Needs (particularly of the worlds poor) Limitations of technology. Sustainable development, sustainable growth, and sustainable use have been used interchangeably, as if their meanings were the same. They are not. Sustainable growth is a contradiction in terms: nothing physical can grow indefinitely. Sustainable use, is only applicable to renewable resources. Sustainable development is used in this context to mean: improving the quality of human life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystems.
• Erin Balser  'Capital Accumulation, Sustainability and Hamilton, Ontario: How Technology and Capitalism can Misappropriate the Idea of Sustainability' BIOX biofuel plant, alternative 'clean' fuel, renewable, more expensive to produce. BIOX largest production plant 2004, situated in the poorest area of ontatio, hamiton, negative social and environmental consequences. 
• Greenwashing- this is the idea that now many companies are passing their products off as being 'good' for the environment. The way that they manage this is by using earthy tones on their packaging and attaching an emotional message onto the product. This makes it more likely for consumers to buy as it will make them feel like they are doing their bit for the environment. For example Mcdonalds within Europe has now taken on a new 'green' look to it. 
• Victor Papanek ‘Most things are designed not for the needs of the people but for the needs of manufacturers to sell to people’ (Papanek, 1983:46) 'Design for the real world' 1971. 

Critical Studies Lecture Five.

Jean Baudrillard and hyper reality.

• Santa is a product of representations. Coke adverts illustrated him and through time he became well known through the world, depicted in a certain at. We take it for granted. Branding becomes more popular or more important then the product itself.
• Jean Baudrillard 1929-2007 French philosopher, critic, social and cultural theorist and photographer.Semiotics, political economy, postmodernism, popular culture and media theory.
• Post structuralism- Gilles Deleuze, Helene Cixous, Jacques Derrida, Foucault, Barthes, and Baudrillard. The play of language, signs, and structures.
• Structuralism- Althusser, Kristeva, Lacan, Levi Strauss, Leroi-Gourhan, Barthes. Language, signs important in how they represented the world. Structures, how they make the world work, everything has a structure and needs to work.
• Guy Debord- ‘Society of the Spectacle’ 1967. Marxist theorist revised Marx’s main concepts to analyse commodity, relations in the age of consumer culture. Society has become an immense accumulation of spectacles.
• Karl Marx- Pioneer philosopher and political and economic theorist developed the ‘critique of political economy’ maintained capitalist society in an industrial age functions on bias ‘labour theory of value’ and exchange of commodities argued that capitalism constitutes one kind of ‘mode of production’. Would eventually be replaced by another one. In capitalist society all that is solid melts into air. Money is an abstraction of value, its more about things that are floating around new technologies as supposed to material goods, money etc.
• Saussure- Pioneer of semiotics; understand signs then we can understand, underlying, structures of language etc. Language functions also on basis of theory of value ‘linguistic value’ and basis of exchange of signs. You say the word tree, take the letters in your mind and create a concept, syntax which creates meaning, we know that tree means tree even if its not there.
• Marcel Mauss- Anthropologist and ethnographer renowned for his analysis of the ‘economy of the gift’ in different societies idea that gifts are only given.
• Georges Batalille- Philosopher, novelist, poet. Writings on death, transgression, general economy, based on ‘expenditure without return’. You pay for something but get nothing in return is it a gift.
• Simulacrum- Are copies either of the timing, they are intended to represent or stand in for or in recent history are merely copies of copies. The copies take away from the underlining reality of the real thing. Baudrillard- is there an underlining reality? Key term is postmodern. The matrix uses simulacra book, something that appears, as it is not, postmodern theory. The whole idea of the matrix is similar to Baudrillard theory of what the world is.
• Jorges Luis Borges- ‘Collected fictions’ Andrew Hurley. Difficult to tell the difference between what you are mapping and the territory. If they are exactly the same how can you differentiate between the two.
•  Baurillard even says ‘desert of the real itself’ a quote they use in the matrix film. Masks and denatures a profound reality. No relation to any reality whatsoever it is its own pure simulacrum. 

Critical Studies Lecture Four.

Communication Theory

There are 7 traditions of the communication theory.

1.

• The information or cybernetic theory of communication, useful for:
  - Researching how as a designer your work makes effective communication.
  - Main limitation is that it is a linear process and is not concerned with the production of meaning itself, which is a socially mediated process.
• Shannon and Weaver Bell Laboratories 1949.
• There are three levels of communication problems:
  LEVEL ONE: Technical – Accuracy systems of encoding and decoding compatability of systems/need for specialist equipment or knowledge.
  LEVEL TWO: Semantic - Precision of language how much of the message can be lost without meaning being lost? What language to use?
  LEVEL THREE: Effectiveness - Does the message affect behaviour the way we want it to? What can be done if the required effect fails to happen?
• BARB (Broadcasters, audiences research board)
• Semiotics There are three basic concepts
  1. Semiantics – addresses what a sign stands for (dictionarys)
  2. Syntactics – relationship between signs.
  3. Pragtactics.
• Semiotics and the ‘Semiosphere’ semiotics examines signs as if they are part of the language.

2.

• Semiotics useful for researching how we make meaning within any given situation and how art/design is ‘read’ within that situation. Teaches us that reality can be read as a sstem of signs and can assist us to become more aware of reality as a construction and the roles played by us and others in constructing it.
• No language, even if its visible is self explanatory, all languages must be learnt.

3.

• The phenomenological theory
  - is the process of knowing through direct experience. It is the way in which humans come to understand the world.
• The Embodied Mind communication seen as an extension of the nervous system. It starts with the awareness of the body, langauage is seen as part of that system existing as an neuronal pathway that are linked within the brain. The key is the physiological classification of coding and encoding.
• The process of interpretation is central unlike the semiotic tradition, where interpretation is separate from reality in the phenomometical tradition we are interested in what is real for the person.

4.

• Rhetoric How to project your voice, personification as rhetoric is mostly used to humanize inanimate objects or ideas, such as rhetoric itself. It is a type of rhetoric trope such as irony, hyperbole, personification. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion.
• Images with no text underneath them are not anchored they have no explanation.
• Metaphor meaning transfer is a language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects or activities. Enables us to grasp new concepts and remember things by creating associations.

5.

• The sociopsy chological tradition
  -The study of the individual as a social being
  -Three key areas of socio psychological communication expression, interaction and influence.
• Internal co-determinants, core processes and external co-determinants.
• Communication as the act of sendind a message to a receiver and assessing the feelings and throughts of the receiver upon interpreting the message and how these will effect an understanding of the message.
• Useful for: deep analysis of the moment of communication. Psychotherapist Psycho rapist
  There is just a small space added here but it changes the meaning of the words dramatically.

6.

• The Sociocultural tradition
  -In defining yourself in terms of your identity with terms such as father, catholic, student you are defining yourself in terms of your identity as part of a group and this group frames your cultural identity.
  -The sociocultural tradition looks at how these cultural understanding roles and rules are worked out interactively in communication. Context is seen as being crucial to forms and meanings of communication.
• How power structures effect us within communication theories.
• Feminist studies examine or critques assumptions about and experiences of gender that pervade all.
• Post colonial studies.

THE RHETORIC OF IMAGES

Saussure believed that the sign was a linguistic unit consisting of signifer (sound image) and signified (concept) in visual culture the signifier may be thought of as a physical object, which has been given a meaning.

Pierce is interested in how signs represent and relate to an object. Identifies three different types of signs icon, index and symbol.

Icon: Relation between sign and object is one of likeliness. It looks like the thing or person it is meant to represent.

Index: Casual relations between sign and object. Indexical signs are really affected by their objects. For example a fire alarm would be a signifier of fire or danger they have a relationship.

Roland Barthes-Denotations and Connotations

Examined a famous pasta advert for Panzani pasta. The name is Italian so therefore straight away people are going to believe that this pasta is genuinely Italian. You are buying into the Italian country ‘The real deal’. Panzani denotes a range of pasta products but also connotes the general idea of italianicity. The colours used for this advert red, green and white are the colours of the Italian flag again supporting the idea that this pasta is actually from Italy. In the shopping bag there is a lot of other fresh products