49 mins. ago
Umberto Pizzi, who has died aged 88, was a paparazzo who documented Italy's Dolce Vita era, specialising in candid shots of the actors, television personalities, politicians and ***** orted hangers-on who made up the emerging class of nouveau riche.
Pizzi himself spurned the term "paparazzi", which he thought conveyed an attitude of hostility towards photojournalists. He preferred to think of his role as a kind of modern-day Petronius, documenting the spectacles and excesses of the era through its best-known personalities. He photographed stars of Italian cinema such as Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman, as well as Hollywood golden couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
In the 1970s and 1980s he ventured into the realms of Italian culture, politics and the global aristocracy. He photographed John Paul Getty III during his time in Rome and trod on bullets on his way to the scene where the former prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped in 1978. His archive, comprising around two million images, spanned two republics and more than 60 years of history, from economic boom to the season of protest, through to the modern era of mass communication.
The film-maker Tinto Brass pictured by Pizzi with the actress Sandra Milo, 1987 - UMBERTO PIZZI DA/Fotogramma
From the early 2000s he worked for the web publication Dagospia, which became notorious for its section headed "Cafonal": roughly, the uncouth, ostentatious rich. One Pizzi image that encapsulated the new era showed a table of important people stuffing themselves with food. Another was of Northern League and Forza Italia members dousing a reclining woman with champagne during a birthday party.
#dolce #vita #petronius
Pizzi himself spurned the term "paparazzi", which he thought conveyed an attitude of hostility towards photojournalists. He preferred to think of his role as a kind of modern-day Petronius, documenting the spectacles and excesses of the era through its best-known personalities. He photographed stars of Italian cinema such as Marcello Mastroianni and Vittorio Gassman, as well as Hollywood golden couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
In the 1970s and 1980s he ventured into the realms of Italian culture, politics and the global aristocracy. He photographed John Paul Getty III during his time in Rome and trod on bullets on his way to the scene where the former prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped in 1978. His archive, comprising around two million images, spanned two republics and more than 60 years of history, from economic boom to the season of protest, through to the modern era of mass communication.
The film-maker Tinto Brass pictured by Pizzi with the actress Sandra Milo, 1987 - UMBERTO PIZZI DA/Fotogramma
From the early 2000s he worked for the web publication Dagospia, which became notorious for its section headed "Cafonal": roughly, the uncouth, ostentatious rich. One Pizzi image that encapsulated the new era showed a table of important people stuffing themselves with food. Another was of Northern League and Forza Italia members dousing a reclining woman with champagne during a birthday party.
#dolce #vita #petronius
