Umberto Pizzi, the doyen of Roman photographers, has died

Umberto Pizzi, photographer and journalist, has died at the age of 88. Born in Zagarolo on 7 October 1937, he began working as a photojournalist in 1963 for the FAO, undertaking assignments in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. He was returning from assignments for the ‘Freedom from Hunger’ campaign in the Middle East – gruelling, poorly paid work – when a photo editor at the FAO advised him to observe how Roman photographers worked. He spent almost three months watching the paparazzi on Via Veneto before deciding that this would be his profession. 

Pizzi had photographed Turkish mines, Bedouins on the border between Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and Kurdish refugees on the border between Iraq and Iran. He would later also recall children being trained in guerrilla warfare and a week in prison in Greece, after filming a dissident. The move to Rome was also a financial necessity; his reporting wasn’t enough to make ends meet, and on Via Veneto his photographs were selling well.

He did not, however, join the pack; he preferred to work alone. In an interview with Il Foglio, he said he considered himself an ‘anthropological photographer’: ‘When you walk into a party, whatever the occasion, take a look around first. Don’t start snapping away like a madman. Get a feel for the event, study the characters, find the right pairings. Photography isn’t like that of a tourist who just pulls out their smartphone and snaps away, even if, by a stroke of luck, they might happen to capture an exceptional image. Photography isn’t improvisation but the thought process of the person taking the picture. It’s the result of what you see through the lens and what lies within the person you’re photographing; you have to draw it out from their expressions, their movements, their clothes. If you’re a shallow person, you don’t take photographs – you make ceramics. I call them ceramics.”

He has published in Time, People Magazine and Sunday Express Magazine; he covered the sets of La Dolce Vita and photographed intellectuals, industrialists and politicians. His archive spans the First, Second and Third Republics, alongside images of Italian cinema and foreign stars who have visited Rome. 

Since the 2000s, he has collaborated with Roberto D’Agostino’s Dagospia and has been credited with the photographs in Cafonal. Together with D’Agostino, he published Cafonal: Gli italiani nel mirino di Dagospia in 2008 and Ultra Cafonal: Il peggio di Dagospia in 2010.

The Ministry of Culture has declared its photographic archive to be of cultural interest. In April, Rai Cultura dedicated ‘Profumo di Pizzi’ to it, a four-part docuseries directed by Fabrizio Berruti and Gianluigi De Stefano, available on RaiPlay.