Tazio Secchiaroli was an Italian photographer known for being the 'designated leader of the pack' of the original paparazzi and subsequently a model for the character 'Paparazzo' in Federico Fellini's film La Dolce Vita. Believing a picture is a stolen moment from life; he wanted his photos full of action and in defense of his aggressive photographic style, he has said, the day photographers will no longer be after you, you'll be after them!
Starting out taking photos of tourists and American soldiers on the streets of Rome, Secchiaroli quickly realized it was more profitable to sell photographs of celebrities to the newspapers. Knowing journalists were constantly searching for a fresh angle, Secchiaroli decided to stage confrontations with his celebrity prey -- an alarming flash, an overturned table, a starlet on the run -- creating little incidents, as he says in 'Tazio Secchiaroli: Greatest of the Paparazzi', to ''produce great features that earned us a lot of money.'' And, not so incidentally, earning the 'victim' a lot of press coverage, thus satiating all parties involved. He and his fellow photographers, Sergio Spinelli, Velio Cioni and Elio Sorci, would chase celebrities on their Vespas and try to photograph them unawares. Mr. Secchiaroli found that magazine editors, bored with staged portraits, would pay dearly for what he called surprise pictures of stars, especially if they were caught in compromising positions.
The Hollywood on the Tiber phenomenon of 1958 in which American studios profited from the cheap studio labour available in Rome made this scenario possible by providing the backdrop for photojournalists to steal shots of celebrities on the via Veneto. The images these photographers created, such as Pierluigi Praturlon's shots of Anita Ekberg wading fully dressed in the Trevi Fountain prompted Fellini to drastically change the current script he was working on, giving the work a new title, La Dolce Vita as well as a new ending. Fellini wanted to meet these 'assault photographers' and was recommended introduction to Secchiaroli as he most strongly exemplified fledgling paparazzi traits.
After Fellini based the character 'Paparazzo' on Secchiaroli in La Dolce Vita his reputation soared. Various filmmakers and stars, including Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren, used him as their personal photographer, in this capacity Secchiaroli turned into the star's companion and confidante. Ironically, a film that reflected Paparazzo's-- and thus Secchiaroli's-- 'other' or 'outsider' status in the celebrity world was enough to grant him unrestrained access inside it. For the next twenty years, Sophia Loren took Secchiaroli with her around the world, and on these voyages the former was privy to snap the portraits of many other international stars.
Secchiaroli's work has been featured in several solo exhibitions including such notable places as the Photology Gallery in Milan, the Palazzo delle Stelline, Patrimoine Serge Plantureux and the Niepce Museum. He has also featured in group shows at the David Miller Gallery in New York and the Helmut Newton Foundation in Berlin.