The book Italian Eyes: ITALIAN FASHION PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 1951 TO TODAY strives not only to bring into the limelight a few Italian photographers who made photography history but also to put into the spotlight an Italian style that goes beyond fashion, thereby offering us a kind of image repertory that reconstructs the changes in fashion and trends as well as the evolution of society from the post-war period to today. Through photographs, fashion features in Italian and foreign magazines, and ad campaigns this volume aims to give an important inside view of Italian photography and its protagonists.

In recent years fashion photography has become the leading medium of contemporary visual culture: it has evolved from mere fashion supporter to creator of’icons and ideas. Fashion photography plays a decisive role in all fields of communication and it is by now considered a legitimate form of art. Its power, in defining itself as image and communication, lies in its ability to record, and very often to determine, the here and now of our time.

The book Italian Eyes: ITALIAN FASHION PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 1951 TO TODAY strives not only to bring into the limelight a few Italian photographers who made photography history but also to put into the spotlight an Italian style that goes beyond fashion, thereby offering us a kind of image repertory that reconstructs the changes in fashion and trends as well as the evolution of society from the post-war period to today. Through photographs, fashion features in Italian and foreign magazines, and ad campaigns this volume aims to give an important inside view of Italian photography and its protagonists.

Italian Eves is not the dictionary of Italian fashion photography: the photographers presented in this book are an important part, but there are other players as well. This project would like to be a starting point, a first look into, an opportunity to reflect (even critically) upon a kind of photography that in Italy has never left the fashion circuit. This volume, which covers a span of time from the offical birth of Italian fashion (1951) to the present, does not follow a chronological order but instead its images are compactly assembled according to theme. In addition to the book’s images there is a series of texts that, from different points of view, attempt to provide historical and critical tools for a preliminary analysis of a topic that is waiting to be explored and discussed. The volume also includes photographer biographies that piece together the life and career of each single artist.

Introduction

MARIA LUISA FRISA

15

A Gaze

ANNA MATTIROLO

38

Rome: Stars and Aristocrats

SOFIA GNOLI

40

ItaLians Look Back

MADDALENA RENZI

56

Directed by Venice ...

Souvenir d’Italie

MARIA FRANCESCA BONETTI

60

The Fashion of Photography

CLAUDIO MARRA

82

The Lost Italian Masters of

Fashion Photography

JAMES SHERWOOD

102

Blow-up

MAURO TI NTI

108

Art and Glamour, Intelligence and Fashion:

The Interactive hnagery of Ugo Mulas

MARIUCCIA CASADIO

128

Ugo Mulas and Fashion

ANTONIA MULAS

130

Reverie

MARIA LUISA FRISA

152

Veruschka Was Here

CAROLINE CORBETTA

164

Muses in Minis

ELENA MORETTI

166

The Pioneers

FEDERICA M UZZARELLI

184

Off to Conquer America

MADDALENA RENZI

186

Ship’s Log: Italian Fashion along the Mediterranean Route

ELSA ROBIOLA

187

Marpessa, a Story

FERDINANDO SCIANNA

2O4

The Celebrity Portrait in Fashion

STEFANO TONCHI

206

A

ANNA PIAGGI

230

Look into My Eyes

FRANCESCO BONAMI

232

Beautiful

TONI THORIMBERT

257

Styles Wide Shut: Dreams That Money Can Buy

ANTONIO MANCINELLI

266

Deep Waters, or the Escape

CLOE PICCOLI

270

Slightly out of Sync

EMANUELA DE CECCO

282

How Beautiful the Girls of Via Margutta

GIAMPIERO MUGH1NI

298

The Toscani Case

GIUSI FERRE

300

Fashion Photography and Advertising

PAOLO LANDI

304

Multifibre Thrills

CARLO ANTONELLI

326

Franca’s Touch

CESARE CUNACCIA

358

Biographies

ALESSANDRA VACCARI

363

Essential Bibliography

393