Tazio Secchiaroli: Greatest Of The Paparazzi, The

Description: Movie stars in sharp suits and sunglasses, disgraced princesses on cherry-red Vespas--all the sights and scandals of the via Veneto at the height of Euro-cool were captured by the packs of shutterbugs who haunted the streets of Rome in the '50s and '60s. The most famous of these guerrilla photojournalists was Tazio Secchiaroli, and the popular magazines lovingly recorded his tussles with reluctant subjects. He was the inspiration for the character in Fellini's La Dolce Vita whose name, Paparazzo, would come to be applied to celebrity-chasing photographers everywhere. But Secchiaroli distinguished himself from the pack with his astonishing instinct for taking the right picture. His shots of an impromptu striptease at a society party devote more space to the entranced onlookers than they do to naked flesh, and this transforms them from salacious snapshots into historical documents. The same can be said of all of the images collected here. From his earliest pictures, through his paparazzo period, to his work on Fellini's sets and as Sophia Loren's personal photographer, Secchiaroli's photographs capture the energy of an era. Whether it's Peter Sellers caught in mid-boogie, David Hemmings leaping into a sports car, or Fellini himself cracking a whip on the set of 8 1/2, these captured moments say more about their subjects than a thousand posed portraits. --Simon Leake