Gucci's favourite photographer on display at Maxxi in Rome

Silvia Di Paolo was looking for a pair of skis. Instead, she found 250,000 photographs, taken by her father Paolo between 1954 and 1966 when he was a reporter for Mondo, an intellectual magazine on which the best authors of the period, from Sciascia to George Orwell, wrote. The images included black and white portraits of Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Anna Magnani, Pierpaolo Pasolini, Alberto Moravia, movie stars, poets, intellectuals, writers and ordinary people who recounted an Italy buried in the past. This extraordinary archive, which remained hidden for fifty years, became the protagonist of an exhibition entitled Paolo Di Paolo. Mondo Perduto, hosted at the Maxxi in Rome and sponsored by Gucci.

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«Cominciò a muoversi lentamente, ad assumere progressivamente degli atteggiamenti sempre più provocanti, sempre più sexy, ma sempre con questo sguardo intenso». In attesa del suo #MondoPerduto, Paolo Di Paolo racconta in anteprima alcuni degli scatti che popoleranno la mostra, come questo, che ritrae Charlotte Rampling. Dal 17 aprile >>bit.ly/MondoPerduto // «She started moving slowly. And as she became more and more provocative and sexy, she still had the same intense look». Waiting to see the #MondoPerduto - Lost World - Paolo Di Paolo gives a glimpse on some of the pictures collected for the exhibit, like the one from the video, portraing Charlotte Rampling. From 17 April >>bit.ly/MondoPerduto Main sponsor @gucci Video by @skino_ricci @quintastudio #museoMAXXI #MAXXImuseum #gucci #charlotterampling #rampling #lacadutadeglidei #ilportieredinotte #oldhollywood #photographer #photography #contemporaryphotography #ilmondo #photojournalism #interview #wheninrome @enelgroup @turismoromaweb @museitaliani @ssupernature

Un post condiviso da MAXXI (@museomaxxi) in data: Apr 16, 2019 at 9:05 PDT

Until June 23, viewers will have the chance to see the delicate gaze of the reporter bring back a glimpse of a post-war country poised between glamour, modernization and tradition. In his works coexist women wearing veils in Campobasso and girls wearing mini-shorts, a farmer at the funeral of Palmiro Togliatti and Sophia Loren who puts makeup on her eyes, Anna Magnani lying under the sun and Giuseppe Ungaretti with a cat in his arms, Monica Vitti reading the newspaper with Michelangelo Antonioni and Oriana Fallaci on the beach of Lido di Venezia, Kim Novak in her room at the Grand Hotel ironing her clothes and Enzo Ferrari in the factory between workers and cars.

“The camera allowed me to express and create a new approach that didn’t exist before. For the first time in Italy, photography started to focus on society, the physical person”.

That’s what Di Paolo said describing his ''humanist photography'', the same moving intensity of famous and unknown faces of our past captured in the book Paolo Di Paolo. Lost World. Photographs 1954 - 1968, published by Marsilio last year.