All photographs by Dino Pedriali, courtesy of Corrado Rizza.
In October 1975, Andy Warhol and Pier Paolo Pasolini came as close to one another as history would allow. Warhol was in Italy for the opening of Ladies and Gentlemen, his series of silkscreen portraits depicting drag queens and transgender figures from New York’s Gilded Grape Club, on view at Ferrara’s Palazzo dei Diamanti. Pasolini, then abroad, was preparing for the premiere of Salò, the most confrontational film of his career (or maybe ever), the following month in Paris. The 53-year-old poet and filmmaker did, however, leave his mark: shortly before his death, he contributed a short critical text to the Ladies and Gentlemen exhibition catalog, in which he compared Warhol’s muses to Byzantine mosaics—frontal, iconic figures like saints.
Around the same time, photographer Dino Pedriali—who collaborated with Warhol in Italy and served as an intermediary within the art world—photographed Pasolini nude in his Chia home, producing the last photographic portraits of the poet and filmmaker. In his January 1976 Interview diary, writer and Interview editor Bob Colacello documented the missed connection:
“DINO PEDRIALI came by with photographs of PIER PAOLO PASOLINI nude at home. Dino is doing a book of photographs of Pasolini. We tried to call Pasolini but his phone is out of order. Dino said it’s been out of order for several months now because ‘that’s Italy!’”
Days later, Pasolini was murdered. Those photographs—and the historical kismet linking these three artists—are at the center of Corrado Rizza’s documentary Dino’s Dark Room, which traces Pedriali’s career (portrayed by Pietro De Silva) through interviews and archival material. Below are Pedriali’s photographs from this period—intimate, unguarded, and suspended in the final hours of an irreplaceable artist.
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