ROME.- In 1949, a boy fell in love with a Leica III C camera; he really did not know how it worked, but he thought that it was a beautiful object. He would go on to publish more than 500 pictures in which figures from the worlds of art, culture, fashion and cinema, alongside ordinary people, are presented in a way that tells the story of Italy as it emerges from the ashes of the Second World War; these were featured in the famous weekly magazine Il Mondo, which was directed by Mario Pannunzio in the 1950s.

Among the subjects of these famous pictures are Pier Paolo Pasolini at parties in Roman palaces, Tennessee Williams on the beach with his dog, Anna Magnani with her son, Kim Novak ironing in a room at the Grand Hotel, Rome, a family in front of the sea in Rimini, Salvatore Quasimodo, Sofia Loren joking around with Marcello Mastroianni in the Cinecittà studios, Brigitte Bardot, Charlotte Rampling, Alberto Moravia, Federico Fellini, Yves Montand, and the faces of distressed people at Palmiro Togliatti’s funeral. These are images taken by Paolo Di Paolo, an extraordinary photographer, and story-teller of the Italy of the 1950s and 1960s.

The volume Paolo Di Paolo. Mondo Perduto. Photographs 1954-1968 is a celebration of this refined artist. This project, which was entrusted to Giovanna Calvenzi with the collaboration of Silvia Di Paolo, is strongly supported and promoted by GUCCI and its creative director Alessandro Michele. Thanks to this volume, for the first time more than 300 photographs taken between 1954 and 1968 are made available to the public. The work also contains commentary from important personalities from culture, journalism and photography such as Paolo Pellegrin, Mario Calabresi, Emanuele Trevi, Marco Belpoliti, Giovanna Calvenzi and Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, as well as writing by Di Paolo himself and a biography by Silvia Di Paolo, his daughter.

“These images that have re-emerged after more than 50 years of oblivion are not only the story of a unique era – the Italy of the 1950s and 1960s,” says Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, “but they are also a glimpse into the heart, mind and eye of a photographer who knew how to give these images out-of-the-ordinary cultural, psychological, artistic and anthropological depth.”