Italy '50s: Photographs by Sanford Roth

Book by Roth, Sanford

Roth ( Paris in the Fifties ), who died in Rome in 1962, was, with his wife, Beulah, an ardent Italophile. And this photo album has its pleasures, including souvenirs of la dolce vita--a Neopolitan fruit dealer who proudly wields a melon knife, a horse that wears a jaunty cap to shield its face from the elements, and a demure cavalcade of nuns gathering in a field near Verona. Stargazers will also enjoy Roth's snaps of Ava Gardner, Romy Schneider and other luminaries. But large portions of the book are generic, showing boys and dogs tussling, signorinas doting on kittens, and the requisite street musicians, statuary and architectural wonders, much as we've seen them before. Nearly 40 pages document Italian artists in singularly frontal, unresourceful shots; though of some historical interest, their appeal is surely limited. The same is true of the volume as a whole: though noting the sights of his adopted home, in his photos Roth remains foremost a tourist, fondly collecting a superficial smattering of cultural cliches.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Beulah Roth's reminiscences of life in Italy with her husband, photojournalist Sanford Roth, reflect the social and artistic circles in which they moved in the 1950s: dinners with sculptors, visits to renowned couturiers, and excursions to photograph people such as Maria Callas. Working on assignment for Harper's Bazaar , etc., Roth was also employed by major movie studios to capture stars on and off the set; the film Helen of Troy brought the couple to Rome in the 1950s. Ironically, the pictures presented under the category "Movies" are fewest and least interesting, with the stronger images, all black-and-white duotones, found in the "Daily Life" and "Artists" sections. Roth's portraits, from fruit salesmen to artists who made their reputations before World War II, are individually sensitive and collectively evocative of that particularly rich moment in postwar Italy.
-Ann Copeland, Cham paign, Ill.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.