He has been a regular contributor to American Vogue, and Vogue Italia, W, Vanity Fair, Interview and i-D. Roversi's career has since bloomed to include celebrity and fashion photography. Roversi endured Sackmann for nine months before starting on his own with small jobs here and there for magazines like Elle and Depeche Mode until Marie Claire published his first major fashion story. But he always used to say 'your tripod and your camera must be well-fixed but your eyes and mind should be free'. He was almost military-like in his approach to preparation for a shoot. He was always trying new things even if he did always use the same camera and flash set-up.
But he taught me everything I needed to know in order to become a professional photographer. Most assistants only lasted a week before running away. The British photographer Laurence Sackman took Roversi on as his assistant in 1974. Only later, he discovered the work of Avedon, Penn, Newton, Bourdin, and many others. At that moment he didn't know much about fashion or fashion photography. The photographers who really interested him then were reporters. In Paris, Roversi started working as a reporter for the Huppert Agency but little by little, through his friends, he began to approach fashion photography. At Knapp's invitation, Roversi visited Paris in November 1973 and has never left.
In 1971, he met by chance in Ravenna, Peter Knapp, the Swiss fashion photography and legendary artistic director of Elle magazine. During the same year, Roversi opened, with his friend Giancarlo Gramantieri his first portrait studio, located in Ravenna, via Cavour, 58, photographing local celebrities and their families.
In 1970, he started collaborating with the Associated Press: on his first assignment, AP sent Roversi to cover Ezra Pound's funeral in Venice. The encounter with a local professional photographer Nevio Natali was very important: in Nevio's studio, Roversi spent many hours realising an important apprenticeship as well as a strong durable friendship. Back home, he set up a darkroom in a convenient cellar with another keen amateur, the local postman Battista Minguzzi, and began developing and printing his own black & white work. Born in Ravenna in 1947, Paolo Roversi's interest in photography was kindled as a teenager during a family vacation in Spain in 1964.
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