ART

A major exhibition at Venice’s Palazzo Fortuny has credited the Italian paparazzi with changing the rules of photojournalism. The 100-photo exhibition is a tribute to five famed celebrity photographers who burst on the scene in 1958, capturing the night-time antics of Hollywood stars and deposed kings on Rome’s Via Veneto. “What we did, without knowing it at the time, was begin a new era in photojournalism,” said Elio Sorci, now 56, who became one of the world’s most famous photographers in 1962 when he secured photographic proof that Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, then in Rome for the filming of “Cleopatra,” were romancing each other in the Italian countryside. “I considered it my business to take pictures in places where photographers were not allowed.” The exhibit, which labels itself “the first scientific recognition of the phenomenon of paparazzi,” runs through December.