TAZIO 100
Opening: Thursday, October 9, at 6:30 pm
Through October 10 to December 13, 2025
Tuesday to Saturday, 3:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Curated by Glenda Cinquegrana
In collaboration with David Secchiaroli and Admira.
Glenda Cinquegrana Art Consulting is pleased to present TAZIO 100, an exhibition organised in partnership with David Secchiaroli and Admira on the occasion of the centenary of the most iconic Italian photographer of the Twentieth century. Tazio Secchiaroli (1925–1998) is regarded as one of the founding figures of photographie d’assaut, a practice that would later crystallise under the now-infamous label paparazzo, but as a visual chronicler of the Roman spirit in transformation. His lens captured the vital energies of a city rising from Post-war rubble into a global capital of cinema, celebrity, and showbiz.
A native of the Centocelle district in Rome, Secchiaroli came to prominence in the late 1950s with his ironic and different portrayals of the nocturnal, high-society world centred around Via Veneto. It was here that he met Federico Fellini, who would famously draw inspiration from him in shaping the eponymous character of the paparazzo in La Dolce Vita (1960). That turning point marked a radical shift in Secchiaroli’s trajectory: abandoning traditional photojournalism, he immersed himself in the world of cinema, photographing behind the scenes at Cinecittà and visually narrating the golden age of Italian film. From 1964 onward, he became Sophia Loren’s personal photographer for over twenty years. accompanying her around the globe for over twenty years.
Conceived in close collaboration with David Secchiaroli and Giovanna Bertelli, TAZIO 100 retraces and celebrates the arc of a career that not only pioneered the aesthetic and mechanics of paparazzi culture but also bore witness to the mythopoeia of Italian cinema in its most luminous era. Through a carefully selected group of nearly twenty-five photographs, the exhibition unfolds in three thematic chapters: the first dedicated to his work as a paparazzo, with images that hover between pursuit and evasion, evoking the feverish glamour of La Dolce Vita and Rugantino’s Rome; a second focusing on portraits of international and Italian cinematic icons such as Claudia Cardinale, Brigitte Bardot, David Hemmings, Marcello Mastroianni, Bette Davis alongside major directors such as Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Pier Paolo Pasolini; and a final section entirely devoted to Sophia Loren, both actress and woman.
Historiography acknowledges Secchiaroli’s role in disrupting the formal codes of neorealist photography, seeking new ways of visual narration. Trained on Roman press agencies, he was among the first to recognise the communicative potential of the exaggerated nightlife surrounding the stars of Via Veneto. Once turned toward cinema, his gaze evolved into one both documentary and lyrical, a vision poised between epic intimacy and staged myth. His work captures the inimitable generation of Post-war Italian cinema in a delicate balance between reality and imagination.
