Biography

Gary Klein is a self-trained photographer. He lives in New York City, where he has been in the music business for more than 40 years. Starting out as a songwriter, Gary co-wrote the 1962 seminal hit,  BOBBY'S GIRL (I WANNA BE). He later turned to producing records for Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Glen Campbell, Judy Collins, Janis Ian, Roger Miller, Johnny Cash, Liza Minnelli and many, many others.

As much as he loved music, Gary has also had a life-long love affair with Italian food. Following that passion, Gary has been traveling to Italy for the past 15 years and has eaten in countless restaurants, not just in the major cities but also in the magical country towns that dot the Italian landscape. During this time he kept a database of restaurants, describing what he ate and the ambiance of each restaurant. As his list grew, it became more and more difficult to remember one restaurant from the other, so he began to photograph each meal.

But photographing the food wasn’t enough for him; he wanted to make sure the color of the food looked exactly the way it did in Italy. So with the help of his professional photographer friends, he spent more than four years learning how to print his photographs to his exacting standards.

This is a pictorial record of the delicious result.