Benedetta Barzini

Benedetta Barzini (born 22 September 1943 in Porto Santo Stefano)[1] is an Italian photomodel, journalist, writer, educator, feminist.

In the 1960s she made a brilliant career as a model in the United States, shooting for Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Ugo Mulas, Henry Clarke (photographer), Andy Warhol, became the first Italian on the cover of American Vogue and in 1965 Barzini's photograph graced the cover of the first issue of Italian Vogue, but by the end of the decade was disillusioned with the fashion world.

After leaving the family, Luigi Barzini didn't even congratulate Benedetta on her birthday, and when travelling to New York her mother rented herself an apartment on the 60th floor of a skyscraper, and her children a separate flat on the third, where a nanny lived with them.

She began training at the Actors Studio around that time,[5] and in the process became romantically involved with, and later engaged to, New York poet and media artist Gerard Malanga, an early collaborator of Andy Warhol.

[5] Barzini became friends with and muse to artists including Salvador Dalí, Lee Strasberg, Bert Stern, and Richard Avedon in the course of her career.

[9] In 1968 she returned to Milan, tired, by her own admission, of being in America as a mere prop and a numb witness to the life that was going on around her, with no one interested in her as a person.

[7][3] Upon returning to Milan, Barzini became a Marxist and joined the Italian Communist Party and worked on a project for health courses for workers in factories.

She openly stated that in the fashion world, a woman is "game" and a photographer is a "predator" whose aim is to sell their prey to the highest bidder.

[20] In 2017, Barzini received a gold medal for civil honor from the Milan City Council, in part for “destroying the stereotype of the brainless cover girl.”[9][21][22] In 2018, she won the Victoria award of the initiative Il tempo delle donne, established by Procter & Gamble.