Milton Gendel, photographer: He came to Rome and never left

Picnic at Villa Centinale, near Siena.  Milton Gendel photo.  

Milton Gendel in his Washington Square apartment, 1940s

Milton Gendel's Rome experience began with a certain serendipity.  In 1949, at age 31, the New York City native was ready to return to China on a Fulbright scholarship.  Mao's Communist government intervened--the new regime did not welcome young scholars--and Gendel made his way to Rome instead, the beginning of a 60-year relationship with the city.  He never returned to live in the United States.

Within just a few years, Gendel had become a central figure in Rome's art scene.  In the mid-1950s, he helped found the Rome-New York Art Foundation, located on the Tiber Island beneath Gendel's apartment--the same apartment featured in the opening scenes of Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura (1960).  Through the foundation, and as the Rome correspondent for ART News, he played a central role in Rome's "la dolce vita" scene between 1958 and 1962, nurturing the careers of some of Italy's most important artists, including Alberto Burri, Toti Scialoja, Tancredi, Ettore Scola, and Mimmo Rotella.  Among those in Gendel's inner circle were Robert Motherwell, Alexander Calder, and Willem de Kooning.  An early close friend was Rome's architectural theoretician, Bruno Zevi.  Zevi's introduction to Adrian Olivetti led Gendel to employment doing international public relations for the Olivetti firm.

Perhaps best known as a fashion and celebrity photographer, Gendel photographed (among others), Queen Elizabeth II, Salvador Dali, Peggy Guggenheim, and John Paul Getty.  But he was also widely known for his evocative, even poetic (moreso, at least, than the postwar neo-realist aesthetic) photos of Rome, Rome environs, and Italy.

Evelyn Waugh, Lady Diana Cooper, and Georgina Masson.
(Masson's "The Companion Guide to Rome" is our favorite
long-form Rome guidebook.)

Piazza del Popolo, sans obelisk

Church Wedding

The Flying Ephebe, Rome, 1979

In 1972, Gendel moved his studio to an apartment in Palazzo Costaguti in Piazza Mattei.  Then, in 2011, in exchange for transferring his photographic archive to the Primoli Foundation, he gained access to a first floor apartment in Palazzo Primoli, complete with a loggia on the Tevere.  He lived there until his death on October 11, 2018.

Of Rome's many treasures, Gendel was especially fond of the Protestant Cemetery (now called the Non-Catholic Cemetery); the Pyramid of Cestius; the medical museum in the Santo Spirito hospital; and Borromini's church, San Carlo alle Quartro Fontane.

An early Gendel photo, and one of his most famous.  That's Gendel's shadow in the foreground.  

Bill
For more on Gendel, see this excellent interview in Vanity Fair from 2011.  Thanks to subscriber Marilyn Hochfield for alerting us to the VF piece.

Taking Photos in Rome? Watch Out!

The photos on this page have no common subject matter, but they are related: all were taken within 48 hours, and--more important--all produced criticism, or concern, from people around us, whether they were in the frame or not. 




The first photo was taken in Pigneto, during a public event called Citta' Aperta (Open City).  In this instance, I was photographing a street sign on which street artists had done some work.  As I was taking it, a woman in the distance--about 100 feet away--got up from a bench, waved her arms and yelled "no foto, no foto."  I explained that I was photographing the sign, not her, and she calmed down. 

The second photo was taken across the street from our apartment in via Palasciano, near Piazza San Giovanni di Dio.  The subject was a large banner/sign of Jesus that covered most of the back wall of a small car-washing business.  As I took the photograph, the proprietor or employee emerged, concerned about what I was doing.  Dianne explained, but his unease remained.




Later, on a walk in the neighborhood, we turned down what turned out to be a dead-end street, passing an older man walking a Dalmatian-like dog on a leash.  Working our way back to the main street, I took the third photograph, of a building whose rounded balconies I found intriguing.  The dog-walker was upset, asking what I was doing, and he was not mollified by my explanation that I found the building's curves compelling.  As his dog barked and snarled, he said with vehemence and obvious irritation that we couldn't

Looks like an "abusivo"--an illegal addition--on the
third level

take such photographs.  When I asked him if it was against the law, he said yes, of course it was, and he twice asked us, still irritated and rubbing in whatever authority he (and his dog) possessed, if we understood what he was saying. 

The next day, while reading La Repubblica over morning coffee, I discovered that Ermanno Polla, a professor of architecture, had similar experiences while carrying out a study of Rome's buildings.  Polla's project was to photograph, chart, and draw every façade of every building within the city's walls, which he did over a 17-year period.  "So many negative comments," he said in the interview with a reporter.  "People said to me, 'What are you doing here?  Why are you taking photographs?"  Although the chair of his department had written a letter for Polla explaining his purpose and reinforcing that he wasn't an impostor--and Polla had made thousands of copies to distribute--"only a few trusted me and invited me into the entrances halls or courtyards." 

Much suspicion.  Too much. 
Bill