Italian photographer Umberto Picci died today at the age of 89. Until just a few days ago, he was still working with newspapers and news websites.
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His name was associated with the last generation of “Dolce Vita” paparazzi, from the golden age when Rome was one of the world’s most important centers of cinema.
Over a long career, Picci photographed famous screen figures, including Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassmann, Roberto Rossellini, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
Among the more unusual incidents he experienced on the job was a physical altercation with actor Gérard Depardieu, whom he was trying to photograph. Picci had a direct way of communicating with the people he followed and often spoke to cinema stars in a familiar tone.
His work was not limited to Italian newspapers and magazines. Picci’s photographs were also published in foreign media, including the American magazines People and Time.
He focused mainly on actors filming at the Cinecittà studios, as well as on the social scene along Via Veneto, one of Rome’s most famous areas during the “Dolce Vita” years.
Unlike staged photographs, Picci preferred to capture unplanned, private moments in the lives of the directors and actors who lived and worked in the Italian capital, known at the time as “Hollywood on the Tiber.”
From the 1980s onward, he turned his attention to political photography. In this field, too, the photographer sought to bring to light unfamiliar aspects of the figures before his lens.
In Picci’s view, photography above all required patience and observation. He waited for what he described as the “decisive moment,” the instant that could reveal another dimension of reality and of the person being photographed.
