The royal portrait, in color, dated 1965, of a splendid Sophia Loren, gives history the face of one of the most admired Italian divas in the world. One shot immortalizes two Italian actress-icons, Gina Lollobrigida and Anna Magnani, while they all talk serious to each other, at the premiere of Ben Hur, in 1960. Another photo from 1952, taken by Franco Pinna, portrays Tazio Secchiaroli and Luciano Mellace , two historic “Paparazzi” from the years of the Dolce Vita, while from the Lambretta they take a photo with a flash in front of Palazzo Chigi. These are just some of the historical images that condensed a golden period for the capital, in the fifties and sixties, that of the Dolce Vita, when Rome and Cinecittà had become a center of attraction for international actors who gladly stayed there even outside the set. Images that Bulgari wanted to collect and show in the DomvsAvrea in via Condotti from today in the exhibition entitled “Paparazzi”. A fictional term that Federico Fellini gave to one of his characters in his iconic film La Dolce Vita, from 1960. Paparazzo is in fact the name of the photographer who assiduously follows and immortalizes the stories of the writer Marcello Rubini, protagonist of the film. From that moment on, all the photographers who unscrupulously steal photos of celebrities have become “paparazzi”. In the period of the Dolce Vita, Rome and the Cinecittà studios became the preferred set for millionaire American productions. The movie stars, revered on the screen and from the pages of the magazines, landed in the Eternal city, renamed the “Hollywood on the Tiber”. The “paparazzi”, punctually posted with their flashes, documented his amusements, loves and eccentricities: fragments of dream lives. These masters of the captured moment launched a completely new and entirely Italian approach to reportage around the world. Also on display with “Paparazzi” are the memorabilia and work tools that have delivered unrepeatable moments of famous lives to history: from the arrows that Anita Ekberg shot against a photographer after an eventful evening, to the lens with which the relentless Marcello Geppetti immortalized in Ischia the “scandalous” kiss between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on board a yacht, delivering to the news the evidence of their clandestine love story born in Rome on the set of Cleopatra. For the first time in Italy, some shots from the archive of photographer Marcello Mencarini, whose author remains unknown to this day, will also be exhibited. These images were kept in what Mencarini renamed “La Valigia Romana”: in the Eighties, browsing the stalls of the Porta Portese market in Rome, the photographer found a suitcase containing hundreds of negatives, period magazines, a lamp and a light meter. Examining the films, Mencarini discovered that they were snapshots of actors, writers, artists and politicians from the 1950s and 1960s. A material of immense documentary value that, among the many hasty or distracted passers-by, the whim of the case had entrusted to a photographer. From that moment, Mencarini has never separated from the suitcase, the contents of which he has lovingly preserved and restored, up to the present day. Other unmissable images will come from the archives of Rino Barillari, defined by Fellini as “The King of Paparazzi”, and of Pierluigi Praturlon, the “Prince” of stage photography and red carpet shots. Of course, there is no lack of shots by Tazio Secchiaroli, whose events inspired Fellini to characterize the photographer Paparazzo in La Dolce Vita: a character who forever lent his name to an entire generation of masters of lightning-fast shooting between escapes, stalking and, sometimes, real quarrels with the chased stars.
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Source From: Ansa
I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years now and I have worked for some of the biggest news websites in the world. My focus has always been on entertainment news, but I also cover a range of other topics. I am currently an author at Global happenings and I love writing about all things pop-culture related.
