London-based Italian photographers Paolo Zerbini and Ivan Ruberto launched Bellissimo in 2019, and the first thing they want you to know is that it is not a magazine. It is, as they describe it, an editorial performance — a photographic project that elevates everyday situations and everyday characters who are actually outstanding for reasons that have nothing to do with fame, fashion, or photogenic perfection. The publication is disguised as a cheap beach magazine, complete with crosswords, horoscopes, and a design that deliberately recalls the kitsch rotogravure of Italian newsstand culture. Inside, however, it is meticulous, witty, and built on a documentary sensibility that treats its subjects with genuine affection.
Each issue focuses on a different destination. Volume one explored Ostia, the beach of Rome — a place no one but a Roman would choose for a holiday — with guest art direction by Swedish photographer Li von Euler. Volume two took the team to Cortina d’Ampezzo and its disappearing world of Italian glamour. Volume four built an imaginary Holiday Club Bellissimo, a composite of every generic Italian summer beach. The characters are real people photographed in their natural habitats: the eccentric regulars, the neighbourhood legends, the people who make a place feel like a place rather than a postcard. No casting calls. No models. No Instagram sensations. Just Campari spritzes, documentary photography, and the conviction that beauty hides in the places nobody else is looking.
Zerbini’s client list includes Gucci, Prada, and Burberry. Ruberto has shot for i-D, British Vogue, Off-White, Fendi, and Stella McCartney. Bellissimo exists precisely because they wanted to do something that their commercial work cannot accommodate: a project born from pop culture, mixed with photographic developer, and stirred with a drop of Campari. The result is one of the most charming and genuinely funny independent publications in Europe — a celebration of the beautiful and a disorienting sense of the ordinary, made by two Italians in London who miss the beach.
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