Paolo Roversi is known internationally for his romantic, intense, and ethereal fashion images and portraits, photographs that quiver on the edge of their own seemingly fragile existence. But he always used to say ‘your tripod and your camera must be well-fixed but your eyes and mind should be free’.' Then he went freelance, doing small jobs for magazines like Elle and Depeche Mode until Marie Claire published his first major fashion story. He was almost military-like in his approach to preparation for a shoot. He was always trying new things even if he did always use the same camera and flash set-up. But he taught me everything I needed to know in order to become a professional photographer. Most assistants only lasted a week before running away. Paolo endured Sackmann for nine months: 'Sackmann was very difficult.

In 1974, the British photographer Lawrence Sackmann hired Paolo as an assistant. Later, he discovered the work of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, and many others. Paolo Roversi knew nothing about fashion or fashion photography at the moment. Paolo began working as a reporter for the Huppert Agency in Paris, but through his friends, he gradually began to explore fashion photography.īut the photographers who piqued his interest at the time were reporters. Paolo visited Paris in November 1973 at Knapp's invitation and has never returned.

In 1971, he met Peter Knapp, the legendary Art Director of Elle magazine, by chance in Ravenna. During the same year, Paolo Roversi founded his first portrait studio in Ravenna, capturing local celebrities and their families.

In 1970, he began working with the Associated Press, and his first assignment was to cover Ezra Pound's burial in Venice. The meeting with a local professional photographer, Nevio Natali, was crucial: in Nevio's studio, Roversi spent many hours completing an important apprenticeship as well as a close and lasting friendship. Back at home, he established a darkroom in a convenient cellar with another keen amateur, local postman Battista Minguzzi, and began developing and printing his own black-and-white work. Paolo Roversi, who was born in Ravenna in 1947, became interested in photography as a teenager during a family vacation in Spain in 1964. It brushes up against another life, another dimension, revealing not only what is there but what is not there. Photography goes beyond the limits of reality and illusion.

Paolo Roversi by Alessia Glaviano