Fabrizio Gianni - Straight to the Point

It's been a funny old day!
I've mentioned this man before on Blip. He is Fabrizio Gianni, fashion photographer extraordinaire.
For three decades Fabrizio was the go-to photographer for glossy fashion mag editors the world over. Before fashion, there was film - his first love.
In his first career, he worked with everyone who is and was anyone from Sergio Leone to Clint Eastwood and Gina Lollobrigida to Francis Ford Coppola.
In his second career, it's the same story... he worked with all the supermodels of the day, both male and female, including Andie McDowell, Bruce Hulse and Beverly Johnson (he photographed the latter in 1974 for Harper's Bazaar Italia and she became the first black cover girl to appear in a mainstream fashion magazine). He gave a 16-year-old Charlize Theron her break and did the same thing with US supermodel, Guinevere Van Seenus.
Today, this Rome-born fashion photography legend lives quietly in Falkirk, Scotland, with his model-turned-lawyer wife, Gail, and family.
Gillian Smith, the curator at Falkirk's Park Gallery, has now managed to coax Fabrizio out of retirement for Fantasia, an exhibition of his work, which opened tonight and runs there until August.
Fabrizio has spent the last six months rescuing thousands of mouldy negatives which were lying in boxes in his cellar.
The result is... well, Fantastic.
This picture shows Fabrizio pointing to a picture of Bruce Hulse, who was one of the leading male models of the 1980s and 1990s. Thanks to the slightly bizarre nature of social media, I've been chatting to L.A. based Bruce on Instagram today.
Bruce clearly holds Fabrizio in high esteem. He asked me to take a photo for him of Fabrizio against one of the pictures in the show which he was in. So I duly obliged. It would be rude not to... Bruce has now now re-posted it... You can see Bruce's post here. In it he calls Fabrizio 'the most interesting man alive'. My original is here. It makes for interesting reading. It turns out Bruce's dad is Scottish - or at least has Scots heritage. He came here to Scotland many times to appear in Fabrizio shoots.