SortAra has clear eyesbrings the hair trendy, a short carré, with the line on the left and the hair that, going down to the right, draws a small wave right on the forehead. The face is wide, high cheekbones and thin lips. It is 1928 and Sara Klein, who will take the name of Ghitta Carell, has created his self -portrait. We know little about her and of that little nothing is certain. He was born on September 20, 1899 in Szatmàr, Hungary, daughter of a budapest shoemaker or wealthy girl, daughter of industrialists? Self -taught or assiduous of the photography course “for young ladies”? Some biography says that he had studied letters and philosophy and attended intellectual salons, Others say that he had learned the first rudiments in the studies of renowned Hungarian photographers.
Before his arrival in Italy, in 1924, there is vague news of a ride to Vienna and then in Leipzig. Then Sara Klein/Ghitta Carell arrives in Florence, is 25 years old, an authentic passion for photography and a strong ambition. But they would not be enough if the case did not go into it. The portrait of the son of the master of the pension is taken where he stays dressed as Balilla. Photography becomes a propaganda manifesto that covers all of Italy. In a moment Ghitta is famous. After the stay in the Tuscan capital and a passage to Milan, In 1928 he landed in Rome. Where it opens what will become the famous studio in Piazza del Popolo number 3.
Ghitta Carell: the official photographer of the latest real in Italy
Here the aristocracy will parade, the real one – It will be the official photographer of the latest real in Italy – And here will portray the power, the terrible one of Mussolini’s fascism, but not only. Margherita Sarfatti, journalist, art critic and great architect of the Duce’s rise, will also be essential for the affirmation of Carell. And then Palma Bucarelli, the Mondadori family, writers and intellectuals, everyone wants to lay for her. The technique is simple, photographer on 18 × 24 slabs, few goals and some lamps. What makes it special – capable of undermining the English colleague Eva Barrett in a short time until then portrait of the Roman nobility – is certainly The determination with which he pursues the construction of his career.
He chooses the characters, he knows that some of them, famous and powerful, They will open the doors of her study to others with word of mouth that will allow her to have a unique portfolio, consecrating it to immortality. But it will not happen without obstacles. Ghitta, now Ghitta forever, He is Jewish for his father and now that racial laws are also in Italy for herthat fascism has not only photographed it but embraced, things get complicated.
Reports Roberto Dulio in A social portrait – Photographs by Ghitta Carell (Johan & Levi, 2025): «In January 1939 a new letter to the political police reported certain Ghitta Carell, photographer, German Jew. It is introduced in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the diplomatic, journalistic and artistic environment. This element would be to be supervised in this period, this is a very intelligent and very clever woman and according to my dangerous informant, precisely because it is very skilled in the photograph of all kinds ». It seems the beginning of the end and instead Ghitta, either for the relationship with Queen Maria José or for the one with Edda Ciano Mussolini, is saved.
The stigma of adhesion to the regime will never abandon it
She is allowed to stay in our country and in ’59, many years after that season, will get Italian citizenship. Ghitta the photographer, the Jew, the Hungarian, the statelessness, Ghitta la sober, black suit and foreign accent, Ghitta the affable welcomes you in her elegant study – Even if it forces long antecames – he listens to you and as he scrutinizes you has already photographed you. The secret pact Ghitta makes everyone beautiful and majestic, it is not necessary to be king and queens, The status symbol is acquired in the face of its goal. I know how you would like to be, so I will photograph you to deliver to the story. This is the secret pact between Carell and its protagonists. She knows how to make photography beautiful. He has the art of retouching, pencil and scraper, works directly on the sensitive layer of the slab. It is wise and meticulous. She cares about the final result, please please.
Shocks pictorialism, But it is not immune to Hollywood influences. The cinema is making the big leap, from silent to sound, from black and white to color, and the star system called the stereotypes of glamor and beauty. It is evident in the portrait of Mussolini on this page: white suit, soft and fascinating gaze, in contradiction with the image of the head of the roe deer who with violence conquers and dominates the country.
Benito Mussolini. (Ghitta Carell)
She is a controversial woman, conniving with fascism, in love with power. Of his private life we know nothing, except for one documented friendship with the Florentine sculptor Corrado Vigni so it creates preparatory portraits for sculptures. It looks like an authentically professional bond so that he lavish to make him have clients and awards. Their relationship will last for a long time, until his death in 1956.
Perhaps, it is legitimate to imagine that his life has been entirely dedicated to beloved photography. Carell was an unconventional woman. A foreigner capable of establishing himself without a husband by his side or a family behind him, in Italy between the two wars. He inhabited worlds to which he did not belong, his passepartout has always been the camera. She is Ghitta Carell, the photographer, apparently is there to serve. But perhaps more deeply is there to tell a country on the abyss through the faces of the protagonists of that civil column that was fascism. The style of an era in line with its contemporaries, less cinematic than the famous Elio LuxardoGhitta as a portraitist has a good quality, attentive to every minimum detail, meticulous and perfectionist, mistress of the vehicle, the architect of light and accurate in the composition.
Photographer of propaganda or portraitist of the protagonists of a ferocious era?
It is capable of dominating great personalities of good and evil and to intertwine solidarity relationships with women who have fought to exist and establish themselves. The stigma of adhesion to the regime will never abandon it. Not even after the war, despite a rediscovered weak glory as a portrait of the clergy, from Pius XII to the last official portrait to Pope John XXIII of 1960. He will leave Italy in 1969 to retire to Haifa where he liveshis sister goes and where he died at 73 in 1972.
A precious heritage Ghitta Carell’s archive embraces about 40 years of activity. There is talk of fifty thousand slabs but, once acquired by the Ferrania 3M information center (CIFE 3M) and numerous negative prints are made, the original slabs are lost. Many prints and enlargements remain of all his work, unfortunately the original slabs are almost all dispersed. Today, the exhibition Ghitta Carell – Portraits of the twentieth century edited by Roberto Dulio, promoted by FAI – Fund for the Italian environment, At Villa Necchi Campigliopresents more than one hundred works, recovered from dozens of private collectors: letters, postcards, books, archival documents. And the photographic equipment, exposed for the first time.
Ghitta Carell. (Ghitta Carell)
Who knows what Ghitta would be able in the era of selfies
It is an opportunity to rethink his work that has always divided critical and historical. Propaganda photography or grotesque portrait of the protagonists of a ferocious era? And what about the photo editing that applies to the images, are they to embellish or to denounce the artifice and lie of the representation? Neoclassical or Renaissance, glamorous and modern, no label adheres to Ghitta Carell since it was unique.
A woman capable of portraying an era and her protagonists. In his works there are certainly the echoes of tradition, But there is also the tension towards the new one who arrives and whose noise of the steps he hears. American cinema, the myth of beauty, magazines and rotocalcs, the advent of color and technology. The world is changing and, if her photography evokes classicism, she is herself who is overlooking the future. He believed in the portrait not only as a form of art, rather as a psychological investigation.
Today that nothing is more exclusive and the selfie stole the scene from the portrait of study, Who knows what the third millennium ghitta would be capable of. What power could seduce it and how many devilies could do with Digital tricks and artificial intelligence to perfect its subjects. Would he still know how to make Glamourous the protagonists of the contemporary scene?
And, as for us, Perhaps we should be able to protect and preserve its heritage precisely because we would have recognized it as such. And, with the gratitude that is due to historywe could thank the fascinating and controversial pioneer who brought to light the protagonists of the dark time.