"The Kiss" shot by Marcello Geppetti which captures the passion between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton becomes a video in NFT. It was the June 18, 1962 in Ischia and the two actors during a break from filming the colossal "Cleopatra" were surprised by the photographer Marcello Geppetti, who immortalized them in that magical moment thus proving their clandestine love story, the most sought after of the moment. The shot became the highest paid photo in history.
60 years later, the kiss was reconstructed in digital format using original negatives and morphing techniques and is being auctioned as a video on ItaliaNFT by the Marcello Geppetti Media Company.
“The rebirth of the immortal kiss in the form of video NFTs represents a historic moment not only for the world of non-fungible tokens but for all Made in Italy, because it attests once and for all the potential of NFTs in giving new life to the artistic heritage and cultural presence in our country”, he comments Achille Minerva, CEO and founder of ItaliaNFT. "The quality and historical significance of Marcello Geppetti's photos, the progress of computer graphics technologies and the inviolability guaranteed by a granite platform based on Blockchain represent a winning model for bringing excellence of this type into the new era of digital value" .
Marcello Geppetti he starts at the Giuliani and Rocca agency, then works at Meldolesi-Canestrelli-Bozzer, one of the most important agencies in the 50s and 60s. In that period, he takes the distressing photo of some women who throw themselves into the void while the Ambassadors Hotel is on fire in Via Veneto, Rome; the photos are so strong and intense that they go around the world. He is part of a group of photographers that will inspire Federico Fellini to create the character of the Paparazzo in the film "La Dolce Vita" in 1960.
Subsequently, Geppetti became a freelancer, working closely for ten years with Il Momento Sera, one of the most important newspapers of the time. In the years of the "Dolce Vita" he took epoch-making photographs: among others, the first nude of Brigitte Bardot and the kiss between Liz Taylor and Richar Burton (both married at the time to others), but his activity continued during the student protest and the years of lead.
At the same time, Geppetti continues to take photos of society and daily life. Photos of him are posted on Time Magazine, Life, Spindrift, Donna Karan and are exhibited in some galleries in Rome, Milan, London, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, St. Petersburg, New York, San Francisco and St. Tropez.
His photos have been sold at Sotheby's auction house. In 2010, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the film "La dolce vita", 120 of the most fascinating images were exhibited at the National Cinema Museum in Turin. Geppetti made his last photo on February 27, 1998. In his life he took and archived more than a million photos.
