Paolo Roversi I

In this film legendary fashion photographer Paolo Roversi talks about the very beginning of his brilliant career and discusses the inventive photographic techniques he uses that have made him so successful. Roversi believes it's all about his relationship with the model, not so much about technique.

He particularly describes his techniques with flashlights and colored filters as, "simple and playful”, although the images are beautiful and captivating, they are more thoughtfully intricate than he would like to admit. Some of his signature images are the photos with a longer exposure time during which Roversi goes over the bodies and faces of the models with a small flashlight, illuminating and highlighting certain parts while leaving others in the dark, giving his photos a mysterious, ethereal impression, almost poetic. Roversi remembers one of his first shoots for Marie Claire in the Seventies: “I had cut out all of the pages and put them in my book.

I went to the kiosks to see if people were looking at them. Then, on the Saturday, I went to the market to buy a fish and the guy took the page with my most beautiful photograph on it, tore it out and wrapped the fish up in it. That was the first slap on the face of my career." This was indeed a sweet but humbling experience for Roversi. His photographic aesthetic reflects that of studio photography in its earliest days, but with a stark modernity infused with nostalgia. His subjects ignite an intensity that reveals as much of the photographer as of the model.

Roversi’s list of credits runs from shoots for Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire to catalogues for Romeo Gigli, Christian Dior and Yohji Yamamoto.