A Magazine Curated By Pierpaolo Piccioli takes the city of Rome as the starting point of a longform visual essay. As his first editorial project as creative director of Valentino, Pierpaolo shared a map of his favorite places in Rome, from the Spanish Steps to Trastevere and the Palatine Hill, to the beach of his hometown Nettuno. His own vision of elegance and extravagance – mixed with paintings from the Italian Renaissance and works by William Kentridge – met the candid eye of American photographer Charles H. Traub, known for his iconic series Lunchtime on the streets of New York City and Dolce Via across Italy in the 1980s. Throughout this issue, Traub documented Pierpaolo’s vision of couture within everyday life, featuring a host of characters from near and far including models Leslye Houenou, Hannelore Knuts and Aurora Talarico, as well as Pierpaolo’s wife Simona and daughter Benedetta, in all the places dear to Pierpaolo Piccioli.
Imagined by Luigi Ballerini, the following musings are an adaptation from the introduction to Dolce Via: Italy in the 1980’s by Charles H. Traub, Damiani, 2014.
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PHOTOGRAPHER Good Morning, Muse, I’m really glad to see you, as l am in need of assistance.
MUSE I wish I could share your feeling.
P Spare me your sarcasm. What I need is something you hand out freely to all your devotees. Anyhow, I have been in your debt for so long that one more dram of generosity on your part should not undermine our long-standing and well-tested partnership.
M Hold it, hold it, my big mouth friend. Refrain from drawing conclusions and mind the wisdom of your assumptions. What kind of partnership could ever exist between debtors and creditors?
P The only partnership worthy of its name, the only joint venture not founded on a commonality of symptoms.
M Say, you seem to speak like somebody either going to see an analyst or returning from an inspiring session.
P Neither I’m simply trying to revive the motivations that led me to photograph street life in Italy. I’d like to thread together images I framed, a few years back, knowing full well that things, and people, myself included, have changed dramatically in the last decade or so, relocating from the Savannah of TV to the desert of the Internet.