Born in 1945, zodiac sign Aquarius, Rino Barillari is today one true living legend. Extremely elegant, with his always well-groomed moustache, rigorously raven black like his always impeccably cut hair, and the mocking grimace of someone who isn’t afraid of anyone. Gascon and poet at the same time, 78 wonderfully well-carried years old, with this smile of his eternally ready to do him justice. Captivating, sly, bewitching and enveloping. “The King”, he is the only true king still left of the famous Roman paparazzi. Photos of him are the largest modern archive in the world of cinema. An archive that contains, preserves and narrates through images the beauty and success of famous people such as Liz Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Kennedy, Barbra Streisand, Brigitte Bardot, Ava Gardner, Silvana Pampanini, Virna Lisi. And then again, Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Marlon Brando, Vittorio Gassman, Anna Magnani, Alberto Sordi, Aldo Fabrizi. But the Beatles, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Al Pacino, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Jackson, Demi Moore, Angelina Jolie, Elton John, Matt Damon, Madonna, Maradona could not be missing. So on and so forth.
We go looking for him today to talk to him about trade unions and problems related to the category of photojournalists, and the result is an open-air confession of the great crisis affecting the information system in Italy.
-Barillari, today you are the National Councilor of the FIGEC. May we ask why you joined the new FIGEC Federation?
I joined FIGEC because I wanted it to be a gesture of revolt. I wanted to convince myself even before my friends that in Italy there is still room for a serious and rigorous trade union, and to shout to the world my disappointment for all that the FNSI has not been able or willing to do in defense of the weakest . That’s all. No ideological choice, but only an instinctive and thoughtful reaction to so many years of disappointed expectations and dashed hopes.
-How did you experience the official FIGEC installation session?
With extreme curiosity. I wanted to fully understand what really new moves between us.
-If you were to indicate the most distinctive data of that meeting?
I would say the final choice of the new executive.
-In what sense?
Perhaps the most enthusiastic and most motivated colleagues of this new creature have been elected to lead the Federation. The best have been chosen.
-What do you see as strange in all this?
The union of journalists has not always shone in terms of quality, and I say this with the greatest possible respect for everyone. Instead, the choice of the new FIGEC executive seems to me almost a challenge, almost a test of strength in wanting to be one step ahead of the others, and not to fear the quality of those who will work alongside them from today and also for all of us.
– Can you tell me another distinctive data from Figec?
I think it lies in the desire on the part of Parisi and Del Boca to want to continue to dialogue with everyone, recognizing that the new trade union federation was born not “against someone” but instead to help many others to feel less alone and more free. This seems to me very important.
-What National Council was this first meeting of the FIGEC?
Absolutely new compared to the traditional sessions I was used to in the past, and I must say also educated to accept them.
-Can you give me a concrete idea of this National Council?
Look, I could talk to you for an entire evening about the colleagues I was sitting with, decent guys, women and colleagues much younger than me who have marked the history of the newsrooms where they worked, men and women who have chosen to return to the barricades of union to reaffirm a right to work that does not mortify anyone and does not leave behind “those who are not on our side”. It was nice to meet them, and above all to hear them talk.
-What kind of requests come from the younger ones?
Young colleagues today are looking not for a single union, but for a union that imposes a strict and fair line on publishers to follow. We need a union that has its feet on the ground, that is able to manage the perspective and the change of society and the sector.
-Was yours a very hard operation?
But do you have any idea of the difficulty in which a photojournalist is forced to move today? Our world is a “jungle”, there are hundreds of young people who have never been a photographer and who have invented themselves as photographers, but do you know why? Because today all you need is any mobile phone, a latest generation mobile phone, you shoot and send your photo immediately, and the photo is published without a filter and without having to wait for the old photographer to return to the editorial office and put everything into the system. Here, by now, the right contrast between black and white is no longer needed, the reasoned photo, studied down to the smallest detail, Meloni goes to Cutro and kneels on the beach of the migrants, but as long as someone takes the right photo with a mobile phone and sends it to a newspaper, and the photo went around the world. It no longer serves any newspaper to spend a lot of money to send its own reporter following the premier, the photo arrives anyway and above all it arrives at no extra cost. Most of the time it’s even free.
-What has most disappointed you in recent years?
Finding these budding young colleagues on large film or theater sets who have no style and no sense of respect. They pass in front of you, without even apologizing, they shoot in bursts and send away what they have just photographed, and sometimes they don’t even know who they are photographing or what they are photographing.
– But does he really say that?
Come with me to work one day or one night and you will realize how the world of reporters and photojournalists has also changed. There are crowds of young people who know nothing about journalism and who, armed with their mobile phones, hunt down thousands of public figures in the streets, only to hope that someone will buy that photo, in defiance of the great professionals of this world. But they also do it for a maximum of ten euros per photo, and they do it at the service of editorial groups who have now understood that this “jungle” of boys, troops with no name and no history, just give them a few coins to start over day after.
– Whose fault is Barillari?
Certainly from the union. No rules, no agreements, no contracts, no contributions, no group discussions, no guarantees, no positions, no future for anyone. How far can you go? Where does the right to privacy begin and where does it end? How much do you risk by publishing a photo of a corpse on the ground? What should you do if law enforcement prevents you from doing your job well? Is it correct to broadcast the images already selected or the closed services that arrive every day in the newsroom from the police, carabinieri, financial police and various prosecutors, and which effectively replace our work and our role of preventive verification? Is there always to be trusted? As you can see, the debate remains fascinating, very topical, but unresolved in terms of rules.
-If you, however, had to explain what FIGEC is, how would you do it?
Just like Carlo Parisi did with me. He explained to me and convinced me that FIGEC actually stands for many things together. That is, communicators, cinematographers, text authors, screenwriters, freelancers, web masters, photojournalists, poets, actors, directors, lyricists, artists, social media managers, in short all of this is the mirror of a profession that has changed, and even radically, it is the world of communication that is no longer what it was yesterday, and not realizing it would mean continuing to betray oneself, making fun of one’s consciences, or worse still keeping silent to themselves what is instead under the eyes of the world.
-Where should FIGEC start from to be more credible than the old union?
From a large conference promoted on these topics. From the answer he will be able to give to these questions. By the way he will be able to deal with this new world of communication. Here we need to clarify once and for all, with the newspapers, with the publishers, with the freelancers themselves, with each other, with serenity and judgment, because otherwise everything will explode in the air.
-Isn’t that an overly pessimistic analysis?
Look, I’ve already said it several times and I repeat it to you too. I think both the President of FIGEC Lorenzo De Boca and the Secretary General Carlo Parisi are right when they say that it is necessary to rebuild on the rubble, on the past, on the congenital faults of many, on the institutional absences of too many of us, on too many conniving silences of a category that has lost its original grit”, and it is necessary to do it in absolute freedom and with a great spirit of independence.
-To whom do you dedicate all your work and your entire career?
To the many photographers of the past, to my teachers, to my traveling companions, to the many paparazzi who have lived with me for years and on the street, Marcello Geppetti, Tazio Secchiaroli, Carlo Riccardi.
-This is his past, and today?
To war photojournalists, to those who have never given up and have continued to move forward despite the crisis of newspapers and printed paper, to those who are no longer here, and who have told the story of the world every day with their cameras Jack. If one day I had to tell the whole truth of my life I couldn’t say that behind my success there aren’t also so many stories of true friendship, of common solidarity, of a very strong esprit de corps. How many times have I ended up in hospital because I was beaten or beaten up in the exercise of my job, but I’ve always had all my friends on the street and in life around me. I dedicate my career and my success to them. And today, even more, I dedicate it to those photojournalists who every day, risking their lives, recount the devastation of the war in Ukraine with images.
-Remind me of how many times Rino Barillari was beaten? And how many cameras have they destroyed?
In more than fifty years of career I have suffered 162 hospitalizations in the emergency room, 11 broken ribs, 1 stab wound, 76 smashed cameras, 40 uprooted flash units, and hundreds of beatings in the years of terrorism above all, when I had begun to follow the various street riots. 1968 in Italy was very violent compared to other foreign countries, and I told it faithfully and rigorously. Today my photos from those years are real pieces of history, at least that’s what the great modern critics and historians write about me. In the end, reading everything they wrote about me, I convinced myself that I was a lucky man and that I had a wonderful time in my life.
-So see you soon?
Contact us all of you.