As you may have seen from previous posts, in the last few days I’ve been bingeing on photography and films to get away from an extremely dark frame of mind that oppressed me. This psychological state was mainly caused by a project I have been working on in the last few weeks.
Sometimes, to take your mind off, you need to fill your eyes with beautiful or thought-provoking images, so, last night, after hitting a writer’s block, and still with that anti-conformist refrain in my mind, I started thinking about people who are somehow ‘different’, people who don’t conform, and eventually took refuge in a book about cinema I have that features a few pics taken by Tazio Secchiaroli.
Born in Rome in 1925, Secchiaroli first started working as an apprentice railwayman when he was 15 years old to support his family after his father’s death.
In the aftermath of the Second World War, Secchiaroli tried to make a living taking pictures of soldiers and tourists in the city centre of the Italian capital, then began working for a few photographic studios and eventually founded in the mid-50s his own agency.
Secchiaroli became known for chronicling Rome's social and political life and at the time also managed to get a few important scoops.
His pictures became famous not only in Italy, but also abroad, and, in 1958, he showed what actually made him “different” from the other photographers, his unique point of view.
During a party at the Rugantino club, a Turkish dancer, Aichè Nanà, started stripping. There were quite a few photographers in the club, but only one managed to capture the scene from a different point of view, Secchiaroli.
The young photographer jumped on a table and got quite a few shots of this transgressive moment. The images showed the dancer undressing and the crow d of young men and women around her admiring and desiring her or looking slightly embarrassed.
The shoot became very popular and the incident ended up reappearing also in the strip tease in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, that features a character, the photographer Paparazzo, directly inspired by Secchiaroli.
Those iconic pictures taken by Secchiaroli have since then turned up quite often at various auctions and were often sold for thousands of pounds.
After taking the Rugantino pictures, Secchiaroli launched a new style of taking pictures: he would walk around the streets of Rome, taking shots of famous actors and actresses against their wills. Secchiaroli tapped in this way into a huge market as readers never seemed to have enough of their beloved stars and magazines paid rather well.
Yet Secchiaroli wasn’t just a paparazzo: Fellini called him to take pictures on the set of 8 ½ and, from then, the photographer mainly focused on film stars and cinema.
Secchiaroli became a sort of secret eye following Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress and Elsa Martinelli on the set of Elio Petri’s La decima vittima (The Tenth Victim, 1965), Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s Per qualche dollaro in più (For A Few Dollars More, 1965), David Hemmings in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow up (1966) and many other stars.
Secchiaroli’s photographs were extremely refreshing: they did not look contrived nor fake, but had an almost casual charm about them.
The photographer amazingly managed to give back the famous directors, actors and actresses who off the screen had become his favourite subjects, a new-found humanity.
Indeed Secchiaroli went behind the scenes of a film and often took pictures during breaks, showing what it was like to be on a set for the actors and the extras as well, showing how real life worked in a fake world such as Cinecittà.
In the early 60s Secchiaroli met Sophia Loren and eventually became her personal photographer.
In 1966 when Richard Avedon requested to do a photo shoot with the Italian actress, Loren accepted at one condition: also her own photographer Tazio Secchiaroli had to be on the set.
Afraid Loren would have denied him such an exclusive chance, Avedon accepted.
Later on in a letter Avedon stated he had disapproved to see the pictures of himself with Sophia Loren published in a magazine, considering them as gratuitous publicity for Secchiaroli.
Yet Loren adored them and you can easily understand why: Secchiaroli had turned the American photographer into a director, showing Loren’s image not through Avedon's camera, but through his own glasses, offering people once again a unique point of view on a famous actress and on a legendary photographer.
So, following yesterday's thread, yes, remember not to conform, and don't forget to always look at things from a unique and unusual point of view, exactly like Tazio Secchiaroli did.
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