Exhibitions of images chronicling the '50s and '60s, key decades in Italian history, are definitely not rare and you may easily stumble upon a gallery or museum in Italy or in the rest of the world, showcasing black and white photographs from those years.
Yet not many people know the images taken by Paolo Di Paolo that will be rediscovered next week with a dedicated exhibition at Rome's MAXXI.
Born in Larino in 1925, Di Paolo worked for the weekly Il Mondo and published on the magazine almost 600 images about Italy and the rest of the world in 14 years.
He portrayed film stars, writers, artists, the nobility and ordinary people but, shortly after the closure of Il Mondo in 1966, Di Paolo abandoned his camera and returned to his philosophical studies and the publishing world, launching a collaboration with the Carabinieri for which he curated around 20 books and 43 calendars.
Curated by Giovanna Calvenzi, "Mondo perduto" (Lost World; from 17th April to 30th June 2019), is a visual chronicle told through 250 images, all of them rarely seen and selected from an immense archive that should absolutely be rediscovered.
The archive contains indeed 250,000 negatives, contact sheets, prints and slide, and was found by chance by Di Paolo's daughter Silvia in a cellar around 20 years ago. Alessandro Michele, Creative Director at Gucci, also expressed his admiration for Di Paolo's images and this generated a renewed interest in the photographer's work.
The exhibition is going to be divided in sections that dialogue with one another, rotating around a reconstruction of the newsroom at Il Mondo, with desks, lamps and images of Mario Pannunzio, the magazine editor, at work with the magazine staff.
In the "Society/Rome" section visitors are introduced to a country that is coming out of poverty during the post-war years: there are hopes for the future, and the first contrasts can be spotted between traditions and modern times as showed by an image portraying women in Campobasso dressed in more conservative attires and still wearing scarves on their heads, and young women in Viareggio in shorts.
This first section also features news stories like the funeral of Palmiro Togliatti, and photographs suspended between art and fashion created in collaboration with Irene Brin at Harper's Bazaar.
The "Society/World" section focuses on Di Paolo's reportages from Japan, Iran and New York, while film fans will fall in love with the part of the exhibition dedicated to "Artists, Intellectuals and Film".
Here visitors will be able to spot unusual portraits of painters, poets, writers and film stars, many of them taken from unusual angles and very natural poses.
There's Lucio Fontana at the Biennale; Renato Guttuso on the Grillo hill; Mimmo Rotella creating one of his décollages in Piazza del Popolo; Tennesse Williams on the beach with his dog, Giuseppe Ungaretti with a cat in his arms.
In one image writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci plays at being a diva at the Venice Lido; in another Kim Novak irons in her room in the Grand Hotel, and then there are Sofia Loren joking with Marcello Mastroianni at Cinecittà; Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni walking while reading a newspaper, and Simone Signoret kissing Yves Montand at the Aventino.
Some of the images showing two famous icons - such as Giorgio De Chirico and Gina Lollobrigida, Salvatore Quasimodo and Anita Ekberg, Luchino Visconti and Mina or Alberto Moravia and Claudia Cardinale were taken for the weekly Tempo.
There are two unconventional icons in Di Paolo's film section: Anna Magnani and Pier Paolo Pasolini. The former invited Di Paolo to her villa at the Circeo where the photographer took a series of intimate portraits, some of them showing a rare Magnani lying in the sun or relaxing with her son.
Di Paolo photographed Pasolini at Monte dei Cocci in Rome, at the tomb of Gramsci in the Non-Catholic Cemetery, at home with his mother and in rare shots on the set of Il Vangelo secondo Matteo, where he was the only photographer allowed in.
The two teamed up also in a rather unusual project: in 1959 Di Paolo and Pasolini did a reportage on Italian vacationing entitled "La Lunga Strada di Sabbia" (The Long Road of Sand), for the magazine Successo.
In between stars, writers and directors, there are also ordinary and anonymous people engaging in very simple acts, from a man reading a newspaper while he precariously balances on a railing around a fountain in Piazza Navona to a model posing in a stylish dress and hat with a child playing in the background.
There are also striking images in which lights and shadows or urban elements form architectural geometries in black and white transforming ordinary features such as a banal pedestrian subway into a futuristic tunnel from outer space.
"Mondo Perduto" is sponsored by Gucci, so you can bet influencers and fashionistas will turn up en masse at Rome's MAXXI hoping to catch a glimpse of "la dolce vita".
But, beware, the stylish universe of Paolo Di Paolo is more complex than it looks as the photographer distinguished himself from the paparazzi of those years for his human (and at times humorous) touch, so try to look at the people portrayed in his images and then at all the elements surrounding them and you will grasp not just the narrative behind the images, but also the essence of the years in which they were taken.
Image credits for this post
Anna Magnani in her villa, 1955, ©️ Archivio Paolo Di Paolo / Courtesy Collezione Fotografia MAXXI
Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Monte dei Cocci, Rome, 1960, ©️ Archivio Paolo Di Paolo / Courtesy Collezione Fotografia MAXXI
Gina Lollogrigida and Giorgio De Chirico, Rome, 1961, ©️ Archivio Paolo Di Paolo / Courtesy Collezione Fotografia MAXXI
Viareggio (Lucca), 1959, Courtesy Archivio Paolo Di Paolo
Milano, via Montenapoleone © Archivio Paolo Di Paolo
Pier Paolo Pasolini at the Monte dei Cocci, Rome, 1960, © Archivio Paolo Di Paolo
Marcello Mastroianni © Archivio Paolo Di Paolo Courtesy Collezione Fotografia MAXXI
Pedestrian subway, New York, 1963, ©️ Archivio Paolo Di Paolo / Courtesy Collezione Fotografia MAXXI
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