A couple of days after our meeting, I got a mysterious telephone call from the Iranian ambassador. He asked me to bring a camera and meet him under a bridge over the Tiber River. I knew the situation was unstable in Iran and that the shah was sick, so I went hoping to see either him or Farah. The ambassador arrived in one of three cars, all of which then proceeded to a secluded spot on one of Rome’s seven hills. To this day, I don’t know what was really going on. At a certain point, the shah’s twin sister, Princess Ashraf, got out of one of the cars. She was an old-fashioned lady with old-fashioned makeup and hair, dripping with jewels. She wanted me to photograph her, in an old-fashioned way, in a beautiful Roman villa owned by the shah. The shah’s entourage knew I would never have accepted the invitation if I’d known what kind of photo I was supposed to take—a bland portrait of an old woman was definitely not my line of work. And cloak-and-dagger stuff had never been my metier, whatever my old army colleagues might have said. But I agreed, out of respect for the shah and Farah. When we were through, Ashraf asked me to send the photos and my bill to the embassy. The whole situation had irritated me so much that I sent a ridiculously fat bill, far more than what I had done was worth, which they paid without batting an eye. Maybe I should have asked for more.
By now my name meant far more than Pierluigi’s, and he knew it. He no longer bothered to pretend he was a photographer. He was just an agent, and I had no need for an agent. Most of my work now came to me directly, or through Elizabeth and Richard, who insisted on having me as their special photographer on whatever production they worked with. The few jobs I got through Pierluigi mostly served to keep him in business. It was an unsatisfactory collaboration, and I couldn’t keep helping out Pierluigi’s agency in my spare time. However, in the last few months of our association, Pierluigi did send me one fabulous job. Or so it seemed when I accepted it: a profile of Pablo Picasso.
In those days, I’d begun to exploit the fame that I’d acquired working with Elizabeth and Richard in order to dictate my conditions when I discussed prices, expenses, and other details of a job. To photograph Picasso, I insisted on total access: 24/7, as we’d say today. I wanted to be with him full-time—when he got up in the morning, when he went to bed, and whatever happened in between. In exchange, I promised that if he, for whatever reason, didn’t like a photo, he could tear it up without any explanation. Picasso’s representatives agreed.
When I arrived at Picasso’s house, the secluded Chateau de Boisgeloup, some forty miles from Paris, one of his assistants accompanied me to a little room, had me sit down, and put a finger to his lips, indicating that I should remain silent. So I sat there in silence. For ages. Nothing happened. Picasso didn’t appear. I sat alone in that room. Every now and then assistants came and went, also in silence. Suddenly I heard noises above me, a table scraping on the floor, footsteps. One of the assistants came into the room, pointed at the ceiling, and whispered, “Picasso . . .” There was another noise: incessant sharp, unpleasant, guttural coughing. I looked inquiringly at an assistant. Should someone go and help him? He replied with a negative shake of his head. Picasso finally came downstairs. He was wearing sandals and his famous tunic. I stood up and waited to be introduced. But Picasso just sat on a chair and began smoking Gitanes Mais. After a few minutes had gone by, I decided to introduce myself. “Monsieur, my name is Gianni . . .”
“I know who you are. You’re here to take photos. Go ahead.” Then he started coughing again.
I got out my Leica and waited for him to stop. But he didn’t stop. So I took a shot of him coughing. He sat there for twenty minutes, coughing, smoking, and coughing some more. Then he got up and walked outside. Perplexed, I turned to his assistants, who nodded, indicating that I should follow him. Picasso walked quickly, especially for an old man. Once I’d caught up with him, we strolled through the countryside in total silence. I was terrified, fearful of having given a bad impression, of not having been sufficiently artistic. Finally, I spoke: “Maestro, how does one become Pablo Picasso?”
He stopped and stared me straight in the eye. Then he turned and started walking again. Now I really felt like an idiot. Cursing myself, I followed him. Then something happened that I still don’t fully understand.
We walked up to a house. A man was constructing a cement channel in his garden. “If I go and write my name in his cement, it’ll be worth something, don’t you think?” said Picasso, and laughed. I replied that the man would almost certainly get angry. “Quite possibly,” he said, and we continued toward the house. When we got to the gate, Picasso opened it and walked straight up to the man, who looked at him in surprise. Picasso spoke to him very politely, inspected his cement work, told him he was a good artisan, and complimented him on his garden. The man stood bewildered for a moment, then began chasing Picasso out of the place, shouting and trying to hit him. He had no idea his unwelcome visitor was the famous Picasso. Given that tattered tunic and long, dirty beard, anyone might have taken him for a tramp. Picasso couldn’t stop laughing. He was still laughing when he’d got out of the gate, whereupon he turned to me and said, “Does that answer your question?”
I don’t know if Picasso really had answered my stupid question. Or whether he’d been joking when he talked about signing the man’s cement. But of course he was right. He was already so renowned that all he had to do was sketch a couple of lines and critics would describe it as a work of genius. Over the days I spent with him, we ate in a lot of excellent restaurants. When the bill arrived, Picasso would flip it over or take a paper napkin or some other scrap of paper, scribble an animal or something else on it, and then hand it to the waiter as payment. Every restaurant accepted this without hesitation. Who wouldn’t trade a couple of hundred francs for a signed Picasso?
A typical Picasso day went as follows: he’d get up late in the morning or early afternoon, cough and smoke for half an hour, then breakfast on cornflakes and poached eggs with olive oil and vinegar. Then he’d take a nap. Afterward, he’d go to his studio, sign a couple of prints, go out for lunch, and then return to his studio, where he’d take another nap. Once he woke up, he’d light a fire and start sketching. I saw more of Picasso the businessman than Picasso the artist. He had a lot of meetings with accountants and lawyers, a lot of long telephone calls in Spanish that I didn’t understand. He spoke to me about the Italian artist Renato Guttuso. He said he was one of his great admirers and that I should photograph him, given that we were both Italians. I’d no idea who he was talking about, but pretended I did anyway.
Picasso intimidated me so much that I was never able to establish any kind of personal rapport. I feared I irritated him with my questions, feared that I’d asked too much when I’d insisted on following him everywhere. I never met Picasso again. And it’s true I could have been more outgoing and friendly. But I don’t know if the photos would have come out quite so well. Picasso inspired awe in me. And the insecurity that stemmed from that probably helped me shoot without thinking too much. My best photos have always been a candid-camera kind of shot. I remember one photo I liked in particular. Picasso was coughing, and in that moment, the light shone across his large hands, highlighting them. Photography for me has always been a question of light, and that portrait in shadow with only his hands illuminated seemed truly powerful to me.
I gave Picasso all my contact prints for approval, and he didn’t discard a single one. Unfortunately, my contract didn’t include any rights to my images of Picasso. I was merely paid to go and photograph him, nothing else. But I was satisfied with my work, and it seemed enough at the time. I delivered the negatives to Pierluigi, with the understanding that he’d send the photos on to Epoca, the Italian magazine linked to Paris Match. But I never saw those photos again. They were never published anywhere. Epoca magazine closed shortly afterward. Someone later told me that a Picasso collector had acquired all my photos from the Epoca archives, but I had no way to confirm this or find the presumed buyer. I’m not even sure whether Pierluigi ever rea
lly did give the negatives to Epoca. Maybe he sold them without my knowledge, to stay afloat. Or maybe Epoca sold them, or Paris Match. Sometimes I come across photos of Picasso from one collection or another that seem familiar to me. But I could never prove whether they really were shot by me or not.
“Does that answer your question?” I’ve thought about that conversation with Picasso often. He was a man who was very aware of himself and of his quality as an artist. Maybe what he was trying to tell me was, “I know who I am, but you still don’t know who you are. That’s why I’m Picasso. I know who I am, and I know what I’m capable of.”
A couple of months later I took Picasso’s advice. Back in Rome I got hold of Renato Guttuso’s phone number and called him. He seemed actually honored that I wanted to meet him and take his picture. “I know your work,” he said. “You’re a great photographer. Picasso told me that he thinks your black-and-white photos are full of color.”
With me still trying to find my way as an artist, that gave me a huge injection of confidence. Then I saw a sketch on his table showing a young woman in profile caressing her hair. The image looked familiar to me. He promptly gave it to me as a gift and wrote a dedication underneath it: “To Gianni, to his art, his likeable character and his enthusiasm. His friend, Renato.” I was delighted, and even more so when he told me that the image had been inspired by one of my photos of Elizabeth that he’d clipped from a magazine. I’m still trying to track that photo down in my archive. The magazine clipping seems to have vanished altogether.
I treasure this sketch, a personal gift from the great Italian artist Renato Guttuso. He told me it was inspired by one of my photos, which he’d clipped from a magazine.
Me and Renato Guttuso, 1969. The photo was taken by my assistant at the time, Elizabeth’s son Michael Wilding.
For a long time, Guttuso’s extreme left-wing views kept him from getting the recognition he deserved. He’s been reappraised in recent years, and I believe many now rank him alongside Modigliani as one of Italy’s—and the world’s—leading contemporary artists.
Guttuso was a much easier subject to work with than Picasso, at least for me. For one thing, there was no language barrier between us. I felt much more at ease with him. And he let me do whatever I wanted. Picasso pretended not to care how he was photographed, but every now and then I caught him striking a pose. Guttuso, on the other hand, truly didn’t care. He just got down to work and left me to mine. The suffering you could see in the lines in his face made him a particularly interesting subject. You could read in them all the battles he’d fought to become who he was. Picasso’s face didn’t display suffering. I believe this says a lot about the two men, and the two artists. And, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve always identified more closely with fighters.
A couple weeks later, I attended Ron Berkeley and Vicky Tiel’s wedding. Ron did Elizabeth’s makeup on a lot of her movies, so she and Richard attended too. I hadn’t seen Elizabeth in a while, so we were chatting about what I’d been up to, and I told her about my experiences with Picasso and Guttuso, how meeting such great artists had inspired me but also made me feel insecure about my work. Elizabeth was very surprised when I told her how much trouble I’d had breaking the ice with Picasso.
Me and Elizabeth, 1971.
“It is not by chance that you’re sitting next to me.” She looked straight into my eyes. “You have talent, but you are too humble. Show some balls.”
If I had recorded that conversation, I would have listened to it over and over all day. I should have realized that Picasso had sent me a message via Guttuso, or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, “Your black and whites are full of color.” Elizabeth helped me understand how huge that compliment was, and I finally took it to heart.
Chapter 8
Success, Italian Style
To some extent, the end of 1968, my honeymoon year, was also the end of my “honeymoon” with Elizabeth and Richard. The excitement of being hurled into the jet set gave way to the reality of living and working at such a feverish pace. This was now my life. I was photographed so often alongside Elizabeth, Richard, and their friends that people started to recognize me, especially after my marriage photos came out in all the newspapers. I was the center of a lot of attention. Everyone had something to say about me, even that I was possibly one of the best photographers in the world. I was young and good looking, had talent and success, and was friends with the most famous couple in the world. But that wasn’t how I saw myself at all. As a kid I’d fantasized about being an actor. But I never imagined that the part I’d have to play would be “the new king of the camera.” Everyone wanted to know everything about me, while I still didn’t even know who I was myself.
Shortly after my photo shoot with Picasso, I visited my parents for the first time since Claudye and I had moved to Paris. Elizabeth and Richard had gone for a couple of months’ holiday at their place near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and I had a break between jobs. In Rome I was always obliged to talk about myself, where I’d been, who I’d met, and especially, what Elizabeth and Richard were really like. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the fame, the jobs, the trips, the women, but I was still far from accustomed to being the constant center of attention, everywhere and anywhere.
The street kid who’d grown up near a rail yard had now become a member of the Roma Bene, the high-society swirl of people who counted. I got more invitations than I could possibly accept: club and restaurant openings, fashion events, birthday parties, art shows. I received awards from publications and festivals that I’d never even heard of—probably sent in the hope that my participation might help improve the profile of this or that organization. But now that I was officially one of the Roma Bene crowd, it was my duty to participate. Yet I couldn’t be everywhere at once, even though everyone insisted I should be. In those circles, if you say yes to one person, you’re saying no to someone else, who gets offended and tells the press you’re an asshole. Or maybe you and your wife chat with some model or actress at a party. A paparazzo snaps a photo, then cuts the image to suggest that something else is going on. One day, for example, I was on a motorbike when I saw Claudia Cardinale crossing the road. Both Claudye and I were friends with Claudia, and I’d photographed her on various occasions. So I stopped for a chat. The next day photos of us were everywhere: “Claudia Cardinale steals Elizabeth Taylor’s photographer!” The episode infuriated everyone concerned, including my wife, Claudia’s husband Franco, and Elizabeth herself. All I’d done was stop to say hi to a friend!
Claudia Cardinale was not just an amazingly beautiful woman, she was also delightful company. Not many people know she was only five feet one inch tall.
And then there was the Countess Giovanna Agusta, the motorbike and helicopter heiress, who called to ask me to do her portrait. Some paparazzo shot the pair of us just as she was stepping into my studio. When I met her a couple of days later and gave her a hug, I discovered that the whole thing had been set up by her in the first place. All she really wanted was for the paparazzi to see us together. This was one of my wife’s best friends. When the photos came out, I was bombarded with calls from everyone I knew, especially my mother and friends. Most just laughed it off. But others really did start taking my wife for a betrayed woman. One thing’s for sure, the not-very-noble countess definitely didn’t get quite as warm a hug the next time we met. I might have guessed, of course. Giovanna’s particular claim to fame right then was the scandal she caused by running off with a Brazilian soccer player, Jose Germano—which good countesses just didn’t do back then.
While all this was going on, I was still trying to find some way to make this new life my own. It was a struggle. Sometimes I’d just get in my car and go, heading nowhere in particular, just driving. It was the only way I could escape all the attention, which weighed on me like an anvil. I’d spent my childhood trying to find freedom. And when it was denied me, I fled. I’d fled from the boredom of school, from my father’s darkroom. Now I fled
in my car, going wherever it took me. My days suddenly felt far too short. Simply keeping up with my commitments left me no time to be myself. But if I wanted to keep working, I had no option but to play the part of a celebrity, even if, as the old Italian joke goes, you can’t spell “successo” (success) without “cesso” (toilet). For me, success was a one-way door marked “Entry only.” Once inside, would there be any way out, any way to get back?
What the media considered news had changed radically since the first time Elizabeth and Richard had come to Rome, but I hadn’t realized just how drastic that change was until I started becoming a paparazzi victim myself. What sold now were scandals. And if there wasn’t one to be had, the press invented one. How could Elizabeth and Richard live like that, under even more constant scrutiny than I, even more under siege? How do you stay sane? How can you be a mother, father, husband, wife in the middle of all that? How can you remain yourself when the public image of your personality is shaped and reshaped every morning by newspapers around the world? They had no time for themselves either. And while for me it might still be a game, for them it was real life. I didn’t want to end the same way. I’d always been shy around Elizabeth and Richard’s friends, and all this made me isolate myself even more.
My mother hated all the attention that was on me and our family. My sisters Paola and Ofelia loved it. My father ignored it. He’d just shake his head and say, “You wanted a bicycle. Now pedal!” which is the Italian version of “You made your bed. Now lie in it!” All this reminded me of something else I’d learned through my father, from Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book, which every left-wing Western student would soon be reading. My father worked on the restoration of the original manuscript. Parts of it had been lost, and it was necessary to do a translation in order to restore it. I read some of the translation, and one of the things that stayed in my head was: “One day you’re naked, you’re a man, you look at yourself in the mirror and, naturally, your eyes go to your genitals. And after you’ve seen them in the mirror, you’ll want to see them from behind, and you’ll have to bend over. And if, when bending over, you see four testicles, don’t be too impressed. It only means that someone is probably standing behind you.” I was maybe only ten or eleven when I read that. But I immediately understood the double meaning, and I’ve never forgotten that warning against thinking too highly of yourself. It became my philosophy in life.
My Life in Focus Page 14