Tazio Secchiaroli Biography
Tazio Secchiaroli (1925 - 1998), born into a family of humble origins, earned his living as a street photographer in Rome at the age of twenty. His photographs have been published in numerous national and international magazines since the 1950s and in volumes dedicated to his career. Among these: The original Paparazzo (Photology, 1996), Sophia Loren (Rizzoli, 2003), Federico Fellini (Rizzoli, 2003), Marcello Mastroianni in the photographs of Tazio Secchiaroli (Bolis, 2006), *Giornateparticulars *(Ciak, 2006) . There are numerous solo and group exhibitions in which he has participated in Italy and abroad since the 1960s. Between 1999 and 2001, his exhibition Dolce Vita was presented by ADMIRA at PHotoEspaña in 1999, at the Sala Municipal de Exposiciones de San Benito (Valladolid, 2000) and the Sala Caja España (Pelencia, 2001). In 1952, after a brief experience with the American agency International News Service, he became a member of Adolfo Porry Pastorel's Vedo agency. Here he learned the tricks of the trade and created scoops which he sold to the most important periodicals of the time such as L'Europeo, Epoca, Le Ore and Oggi. In 1955 he founded the Roma Press Photo agency with Sergio Spinelli. He became famous by being the first to immortalize the eventful nights of Via Veneto in Rome, an atmosphere that Fellini later celebrated in his masterpiece La Dolce Vita. The Italian director was inspired by him to create the character of Paparazzo. In 1958 he began a long collaboration with Fellini, who encouraged him to abandon his career as a street photographer and dedicate himself exclusively to film photography. He will do so starting from 1960. In 1963 he meets Sophia Loren and will be her personal photographer for about twenty years. In 1985 he retired from professional life and died in Rome in 1998.
