Showing posts with label WWII. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WWII. Show all posts

Saturday, December 9, 2023

Limited Offer: Free streaming of documentary film "Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro"

Underfire The Untold Story of Tony Vaccaro from Passion River Films on Vimeo.

 


On November 14. 2016 HBO Films premiered “Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro”. The film tells the story of how Tony survived the war, fighting the enemy while also documenting his experience at great risk, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches. The film also encompasses a wide range of contemporary issues regarding combat photography such as the ethical challenges of witnessing and recording conflict, the ways in which combat photography helps to define how wars are perceived by the public, and the sheer difficulty of staying alive while taking photos in a war zone.

We are pleased to offer for a limited number free streaming of this important documentary. Contact the Gallery for details. The film is also available from Amazon and Apple TV+.

Tony Vaccaro passed away peacefully on December 28, 2022, eight days after celebrating his 100th birthday.

Throughout the month of December, we will be posting tributes and memories of Tony Vaccaro on our Instagram feed. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona is currently featuring the exhibition American Icons: Wright and O'Keeffe, photographs by Tony Vaccaro; and his work is on display at Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe.

View a selection of available fine art prints from Tony Vaccaro here.


Monday, December 4, 2023

Remembering Tony Vaccaro on the anniversary of his 100th birthday and subsequent passing

 

Galleriests Michelle and Sid Monroe pose with Tony Vaccaro in front of his photograph of Sophia Loren at a Pop Up exhibition in New York, 2016
Tony Vaccaro with Michelle and Sid Monroe at his Pop Up exhibition in New York, 2016




Beginning in 2016, Monroe Gallery of Photography presented annual exhibitions of photographs by Tony Vaccaro to honor his birthday, December 20. He travelled to Santa Fe to attend 3 exhibits and meet hundreds of collectors and enthusiastic admirers.

To celebrate his 100th birthday in December, 2022, Monroe Gallery of Photography hosted two exhibitions, in New York City and Santa Fe. Despite recently having been hospitalized for emergency surgery for complications from an ulcer, Tony recovered and attended the pop-up Tony Vaccaro Centennial Exhibition of his photographs in New York City. The City of New York officially proclaimed December 20, 2022 “Tony Vaccaro Day”, and Vaccaro was feted by friends at a surprise birthday party at his favorite local Italian restaurant that evening.


Tony at his Centennial Pop Up exhibition in New York, December, 2022



Tony Vaccaro passed away peacefully on December 28, eight days after celebrating his 100th birthday. 


 Throughout the month of December, we will be posting tributes and memories of Tony Vaccaro on our Instagram feed. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona is currently featuring the exhibition American Icons: Wright and O'Keeffe, photographs by Tony Vaccaro; and his work is on display at Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe.




Saturday, October 28, 2023

The Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie celebrates its 30th edition, honoring the contributions of photojournalists across the globe.

 Via Blind Magazine

October 27, 2023


This year holds special significance as it anticipates the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings—witnessed by war correspondents who risked their lives to document it. (click for full article)


"The late Tony Vaccaro (1922 - 2022), one of the earliest photographers to be featured at the Baueux exhbitions, spoke with brutal honesty about his experience: "We felt like we were going someplace to die and never return. People have no idea what war is like, so I risked my life to capture the horror of it" 



view of Normandy beach taken from a landing craft in June, 1944
Tony Vaccaro: Normandy, June, 1944


Tuesday, February 21, 2023

The Soldier in the Snow: A dark journey down the rabbit hole of war photos, blanketed in snow.

 

Via Patrick Witty, Field of View


White Death, Pvt. Henry Irving Tannebaum Ottre, Belgium 1945: Dead soldier covered in snow
Tony Vacarro


Private First Class Tony Vaccaro, carrying an M-1 rifle and an Argus C3 brick camera, photographed this scene January 11, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge. At first glance, it looks like a painting - spartan and stark, the composition as cold as the day.

“I saw the soldier that was lying down so peacefully, so beautiful as if an artist had drawn it.” Vaccaro recollected in the excellent 2016 documentary Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro. “Death, that is beautiful. It’s a contradiction. You want the ugliest aspect of mankind, death, to be beautiful. Otherwise it can not be a monument.”

Vaccaro died in 2022 at the age of 100. The photo, titled “White Death, Requiem for a Dead Soldier,” was published alongside Vaccaro’s obit in The New York Times.


Full article here



screen shot of the NY Times front page of February 26, 2022 with Tyler Hicks photograph of dead soldier in snow by a tank in Ukraine


Thursday, January 26, 2023

A show celebrating acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography (112 Don Gaspar) can be viewed for five more days—through Jan. 29

 Via The Santa Fe Reporter

January 25, 2023


Honoring Vaccaro


Speaking of countdowns, a show celebrating acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro at Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography (112 Don Gaspar) can be viewed for five more days—through Jan. 29. Monroe mounted two exhibitions—here and a New York pop-up last month—to honor Vaccaro’s 100th birthday; the photographer died on Dec. 28, just eight days after his centennial, which he celebrated in New York with friends at a surprise birthday dinner. 

A New York Times obituary recounts how Vaccaro became a war photographer in World War II—also the subject of a 2016 HBO documentary. After the war, he transitioned and began to make fashion, travel and celebrity photographs for the country’s leading magazines. 

Those celebrities included Georgia O’Keeffe, whom Life magazine assigned Vaccaro to photograph in 1960. O’Keeffe expected a more famous photographer and at first refused to pose: “To win her over, Mr. Vaccaro cooked a meal and made a picnic lunch. When the weather turned too windy for the picnic, he gave her a plate of Swiss cheese as she sat in the back of his car. And when she playfully peered through a hole in a piece of the cheese, Mr. Vaccaro went into action,” the obituary reads. His other famous subjects included John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso and Sophie Loren, to name a few. 

This quote from Vaccaro accompanies Monroe’s information on the exhibition: “We call each other German, French, Italian. There is no Italian blood. There is no French blood. It’s human blood. On this Earth there is one humanity. Let’s do something about it. Let’s live! In a way, photography was my way of telling the world, ‘We have better things to do than to kill ourselves.’”

Friday, December 23, 2022

Tony Vaccaro centennial exhibition on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography

 Via Art Daily

December 23, 2022

color photograph of a glowing sunset portrait of the twin towers of the World Trade Center from 1979

A glowing sunset portrait of the twin towers of the World Trade Center from 1979


SANTA FE, NM.- A new exhibitions celebrates the 100th birthday of acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro in Santa Fe. The show has been on view at Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe since November 25, 2022, and will end on January 29, 2023.

Vaccaro is known for his photographs of WWII, which were the subject of a 2016 HBO documentary, and his editorial work for Life, Look, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and countless other publications. The exhibitions coincide with Tony Vaccaro 100! on view at the Museum für Photographie in Braunschweig, Germany. In both locations, Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition, juxtaposes the living legend’s powerful war images with the lyrical mid-century fashion, film, and pop culture photographs that came later.

On view are more than four dozen photographs dating from 1944-1979. From the battlefields of Europe to the rooftops of Manhattan, Vaccaro trained his inimitable lens with a sensitivity derived from early hardship as an orphan in Italy. After the war, he replaced the searing images of horror embedded in his memory, by focusing on the splendor of life and capturing the beauty of fashion and those who gave of themselves: artists, writers, movie stars, and cultural figures. From a photograph of a running soldier in 1944’s Battle of the Bulge to a shot of the actress Gwen Verdon swinging in a hammock against a New York skyline, the exhibition illustrates Vaccaro’s will to live against all odds and to advance the power of beauty. Several never-before-exhibited photographs are on view: a 1951 image of a bevy of beautiful women surrounding one in a pink dress on a balcony, a 1968 shot of Vaccaro holding up a test strip during a photo shoot, and a glowing sunset portrait of the twin towers of the World Trade Center from 1979.

As Vaccaro passed his 100th birthday on December 20, 2022, he has survived two bouts of Covid, and is one of the few people alive who can claim to have survived the Battle of Normandy and Covid. He attributes his longevity to “blind luck, red wine and determination.”

“To me, the greatest thing that you can do is challenge the world,” said Vaccaro. “And most of these challenges I win. That’s what keeps me going.”

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, on December 20, 1922, Michelantonio Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro spent the first years of his life in the village of Bonefro, Italy, after his family left America under threat from the Mafia. Both of his parents had died by the time he was eight years old, and he was raised by an uncaring aunt and a brutal uncle. His love of photography began in Bonefro where at age ten, he began taking pictures with a box camera. When World War II broke out, the American ambassador in Rome ordered Vaccaro to return to the States. He settled in with his sisters in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he joined his high school camera club. His teacher and mentor Bertram Lewis guided him through a year of concentrated apprenticeship.

A year later, at the age of 21, Vaccaro was drafted into the war. He was determined to photograph the war, and had his portable 35mm Argus C-3 with him from the start. By the spring of 1944 he was photographing war games in Wales. By June, now a combat infantryman in the 83rd Infantry Division, he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach, six days after the first landings at Normandy. For the next 272 days, Vaccaro fought and photographed on the front lines of the war. He entered Germany in December 1944, as a private in the Intelligence Platoon, and was tasked with going behind enemy lines at night. In the years after the war, he remained in Germany to photograph the rebuilding of the country for Stars and Stripes magazine.

Returning to the States in 1950, Vacarro started his career as a commercial photographer, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Flair, Life, Look, Harper’s Bazaar, Quick, Newsweek, Town and Country, Venture, and many more. Tony went on to become one the most sought after photographers of his day, photographing everyone from Enzo Ferrari and Sophia Loren to Pablo Picasso, Peggy Guggenheim and Frank Lloyd Wright. From 1970 to 1980 he taught photography at Cooper Union.

“Il Maestro,” as the Italian press calls him, has won numerous honors and awards. These include the Art Director’s Gold Medal (New York City, 1963), The World Press Photo Gold Medal (The Hague, 1969), The Legion of Honor (Paris, 1994), The Medal of Honor (Luxembourg, 2002), Das Verdienstkreuz (Berlin, 2004), and the Minerva d’Oro (Pescara, 2014).

Since retiring in 1982, Vaccaro’s work has been exhibited world-wide over 250 times and has been published or been the subject of ten books and two major films. In 2014, the Museo Foto Tony Vaccaro was inaugurated in Bonefro, Italy.

Vaccaro’s works are in numerous private and public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

In 2016, HBO Films premiered Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro. The film tells the story of how he survived the war, fighting the enemy while also documenting his experience at great risk, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches. The film also encompasses a wide range of contemporary issues regarding combat photography such as the ethical challenges of witnessing and recording conflict, the ways in which combat photography helps to define how wars are perceived by the public, and the sheer difficulty of staying alive while taking photos in a war zone. The film has led to a career renaissance for Vaccaro.

In 2018, Vaccaro’s photographs were featured in major one-person exhibitions in Venezia, Italy; Potsdam, Germany; London, England; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2019, he was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame in St. Louis, Mo. In 2021 the Kunsthalle Helsinki presented the exhibition Tony Vaccaro: Life Is Wonderful, a selection of 130 images from his career of nearly 80 year

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Pollock Krasner House: Photographer Tony Vaccaro’s 100th Birthday/ Exhibit & Tribute

 Via Pollock Krasner House

Dec. 20, 2022



LEGENDARY PHOTOGRAPHER TONY VACCARO’S 100th BIRTHDAY

click here to view the recording of our tribute with his son Frank Vaccaro


Jackson Pollock seated in his studio with his dog, East Hampton, 1953

Imagine photographing on the front lines while being a soldier in combat during World War II. And later photographing the most celebrated artists, Pollock, Krasner, Picasso, deKooning, and others.

Joyce Raimondo, Education Coordinator, leads a discussion with Vaccaro’s son, Frank Vaccaro, about his father’s acclaimed war photographs and Vaccaro’s iconic photographs of Pollock and Lee. Helen Harrison, Director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center leads a virtual tour of the barn studio where Vaccaro’s photos of Jackson and Lee are displayed.


Tony Vaccaro: A Centennial Tribute

Saturday, December 10, 2022

Photographer Tony Vaccaro, 99, captures ‘beauty of life’ — from WWII to haute couture

 Via The NY Post

December 10, 2022


Tony Vaccaro in his stufio with pictures of Calder, Sophia Loren, and Georgia O'Keeffe

What began as a childhood pastime in Italy turned into a career that took Tony Vaccaro around the world Photo credit  Manolo Salas

Tony Vaccaro took his first picture when he was 10 years old and living in Italy. He soon started toting a camera everywhere — to school, on camping trips, a visit to the Vatican, and eventually to the frontlines of World War II, where, as an American soldier, he documented the Battle of the Bulge, the Liberation of France and the tragic deaths of his comrades.

After that, Vaccaro vowed he would devote himself not to the brutality of war, but to “beauty.”

“I said to myself, ‘You must photograph those people who give mankind something,’” the 99-year-old photographer, who lives in Long Island City, told The Post. “And I went after them — all of them.”

He sure did: Vaccaro has snapped everyone from Jackson Pollock to John F. Kennedy, Jr., Sophia Loren, Lee Krasner, Frank Lloyd Wright — who gave Vaccaro one of his canes, which the shutterbug still uses today — and countless other luminaries, who often became his friends.

Vaccaro turns 100 on Dec. 20, and a new exhibit celebrates his extraordinary life and career. “Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition” runs Dec. 13 to 18 at the Monroe Gallery of Photography pop-up at 21 Spring St., Nolita. It features some two dozen images from a deep body of work, from harrowing war photos to whimsical fashion shoots to portraits of celebrities and artists, including Eartha Kitt and Georgia O’Keeffe.

“In the process of doing that, I hope I gave mankind something back,” Vaccaro said.

Tony Vaccaro in his studio holding on of his framed photographs

Now nearly 100, Vaccaro has snapped countless celebrities, creatives and other luminaries.
Phot credit  Manolo Salas

Vaccaro likes to joke that he has survived the Battle of Normandy and two bouts of COVID, but his entire life story is one of remarkable resilience. Born in Greensburg, Penn., on December 20, 1922, he spent his early childhood in Italy after his family had to flee the States under threat of the Mafia. By the age of 5, both of his parents were dead.

“I was raised by my uncle, who physically abused me,” Vaccaro said. “But he did give me my father’s box camera, and my love for photography was born.”

As fascism swept through Italy, a teenaged Vaccaro went back to the States, reuniting with his two sisters in Westchester County. As an immigrant who didn’t speak English, carrying his camera, which he used to document his classmates and their adventures, made him feel accepted.

Tony Vaccaro on NY rooftop holding a color test strip, 1960
As a young immigrant who didn’t speak English, Vaccaro found that his camera helped him feel accepted.  Tony Vaccaro with test strip, NY, 1960
Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

At 21, he was drafted into the US Army. He carried his 35 mm Argus C3, along with his gun, to the frontlines. He used army helmets to develop his film at night and hung the prints on tree branches to dry. He was shot and injured twice and got a purple heart. Afterward, he used his experience shooting on the front lines to bring life and spontaneity to the staid world of fashion shoots, much like Richard Avedon and Gordon Parks.

Vaccaro retired in the 1980s, but he still takes pictures of his 8-year-old twin grandchildren, Luke and Liam (who live in the apartment across the hall from him in Queens), and even photographed the New York City Marathon in November. He also shares an incredible array of vintage snaps on Instagram — @tonyvaccarophotographer — with the help of his daughter-in-law, Maria.

Two weeks ago, he went to the hospital with a burst stomach ulcer, and was still recovering from surgery when he spoke with The Post last week. (His son, Frank, helped Vaccaro form his responses, jogging his memory.)

Still, he has not lost his boundless zest for life.
Tony Vaccaro seated in his studio in front of his photograph of DeKooning seated

Vaccaro with a photo of Willem de Kooning — the abstract expressionist artist was one of many 20th century boldface names to befriend the photographer over the years.Manolo Salas

“I feel super,” he said over the phone from his hospital bed, adding that he credits “chocolate, red wine and determination” for his longevity.

“I have been lucky,” he said. “I want the world to know the beauty of life.”


"White Death" a dead soldier cover in snow, WWII, Belgium, 1944
Tony Vaccaro’s “White Death”   Tony Vaccaro, courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Vaccaro snapped this stark photo of a fallen soldier lying face down in the snow before he realized the body belonged to his friend, Pvt. Henry Irving Tannenbaum. More than 50 years later, Tannenbaum’s son Sam contacted Vaccaro to ask about his father, and the two ended up going to the field where he had been killed. “I was confused to find that the field had transformed into a forest — pine trees everywhere,” Vaccaro recalled. “The land owner told us that it wasn’t actually a forest, but that the field is used for growing Christmas trees to be sold in Spain. Can you imagine — tannenbaum means Christmas tree in German!”
WWII American soldier kissing a young girl in liberated town in France
Tony Vaccaro’s “Kiss of Liberation,” 1945.Tony Vaccaro, courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Vaccaro often credits this photo of American soldier Gene Costanzo kissing a small French girl in St. Briac, Brittany at the end of the war as his favorite picture. “The day we liberated this small town in France I will never forget,” he wrote in an Instagram post. It was an early summer morning and when news of the liberation broke, women and children flooded the streets. “I was lucky that the French kiss three times [instead of one]. Otherwise I may have missed this warm moment between the soldier and this little girl.”
a distraught German soldier returns home to find his house gone, Frankfurt, Germany, 1946
Tony Vaccaro’s “Defeated Soldier,” 1947.Tony Vaccaro, courtesy of Monroe Gallery

After the war, Stars and Stripes magazine asked Vaccaro to stay in Europe to document the rebuilding of Germany. As he was leaving the US embassy in Frankfurt to pick up his passport, he stumbled upon a German soldier crying outside what was once his home. “He had lost his wife and children,” Vaccaro said. “He had apparently been released from a prisoner camp in Texas or Oklahoma.” The experience of getting to know the enemy made him realize “we all bleed the same blood.” “When we got to know each other we were not much different,” he said.


Georgia O'Keefe on the portal of her Abiquiu home in New Mexico with s cow's skull on the door frame
Georgia O’Keeffe at home in 1960.Tony Vaccaro Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

Vaccaro was assigned to photograph then 72-year-old artist O’Keeffe at her home in New Mexico for Look magazine in 1960. But when he arrived, she refused to look at him. “She was expecting a different photographer,” Vaccaro said. After five days of ignoring him, she mentioned something about Manolette, considered the greatest bullfighter of all time. “I told her that I had photographed Manolette and that I could send her a photograph,” Vaccaro recalled. “So she turned towards me, and for the next two days, never looked, nor talked, to the writer [who had accompanied Vaccaro for the story], Charlotte Willard.” Willard left “in a huff,” and Vaccaro stayed nearly two weeks, snagging scores of intimate portraits.
Gwen Verdon in a hammock on a NY rooftop, 1953

Gwen Verdon on a New York City rooftop in 1953.Tony Vaccaro, courtesy of Monroe Gallery

The Tony Award-winning actress, dancer and choreographer Gwen Verdon was one of Vaccaro’s favorite fashion subjects. “She was a sensation,” he recalled. “She did anything and tried everything.” The photographer was shooting Verdon for a quickie fashion shoot and had to improvise something on the outside balcony of the 12th floor of LOOK magazine, so he tied a hammock and instructed Verdon to lounge on it. “I also had a basket of apples at the studio that day, and we ended up rolling them all on the floor of the photoshoot.”


color photo of Gicenchy holding a camera to his eye by his pool in the South of France, 1961
Givenchy at home with partner Phillip in 1961.Tony Vaccaro  Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography


Vaccaro struck up a friendship with the French couturier Hubert de Givenchy after photographing him and his designs for various magazines. After one shoot, Vaccaro joined Givenchy and his partner Philip by their pool and taught the designer how to use a camera, which Vaccaro of course documented with his own point-and-shoot.

 
color photograph of Eartha Kitt being dressed by designed Givenchy in his Paris showroom

Eartha Kitt at Givenchy’s showroom in 1961.Tony Vaccaro, courtesy of Monroe Gallery

Vaccaro caught the frenzy chaos of a fitting with superstar Eartha Kitt at Givenchy’s Paris showroom. To the right, you can spot the shutterbug holding his camera, “just having fun.”
The Fashion Train, New York, 1960


color photograph of fashion model in pink outfit and hat with suitcase on a commuter train in NY

Tony Vaccaro’s “The Fashion Train” 1961Tony Vaccaro  Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography


Vaccaro took this picture in 1960 for Good Housekeeping of a fashion model walking through a smoke-filled train. He strove for naturalism in his fashion shoots. “Over time I was able to remove anything artificial – even poses,” he said. “I put my subjects in an environment — their favorite environment — and then I took photos.”


models in colorful Marimekko dresses with colorful umbrellas on a dock in Finland
Tony Vaccaro’s “Fun in Finland” 1965. The model on the left, Anja Lehto, would later become his wife.Tony Vaccaro  Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography


Vaccaro shot many campaigns for the Finnish brand, Marimekko, mainly because he was in love with one of the company’s models, Anja Lehto, shown here on the left. “I met her in 1961, when LIFE magazine sent me to 57th Street, between Park and Madison, to photograph [the brand],” he recalled. “Girl number one came in, did her walk, girl number three, girl number four — I looked at her and said, ‘That’s my wife.’” It took a couple years and photoshoots — Lehto was married to Finnish royalty at the time — but the two got hitched in 1963 and had two children. (She died in 2013.)
38

model with an architectural hat resembling the Guggenheim museum in front of the Guggenheim, NY, 1960
Tony Vaccaro’s “The Guggenheim Hat” 1960 Tony Vaccaro  Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography


Vaccaro had incredible freedom in his photo shoots, and when LOOK magazine sent him this sculptural hat to shoot for a story, he immediately knew he wanted to photograph the model Isabella wearing it in front of his favorite museum, the Guggenheim in New York City.



21 Spring Street, NY


Tony Vaccaro The Centennial Exhibition Santa Fe ongoing through January 15, 2023
112 Don Gaspar Avenue, Santa Fe, NM

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Tony Vaccaro: A Centennial Tribute With The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center

 

Via Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center

Tony Vaccaro: A Centennial Tribute

 

photograph of Tony Vaccaro with camera around his nexk

Saturday, December 10 

2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EST

This special Zoom event celebrates the birthday of acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro, who will turn 100 on December 20. Best known for his images of Europe immediately after World War II, Tony later became a fashion and lifestyle photographer. He photographed Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in their home and studio in 1953.

Family members will present a selection of Tony’s iconic photos, and Joyce will lead a virtual tour of the barn studio where his photos of Jackson and Lee are displayed. Participants are invited to pay tribute to Tony during open sharing.

Zoom registration here


Related: The Tony Vaccaro Centennial Exhibitions in Santa Fe and New York

Thursday, November 24, 2022

Celebrating Tony Vaccaro’s cinematic photography Life behind the lens

 Via Huck

November 24, 2022

Text by Miss Rosen

Photography © Tony Vaccaro courtesy of Monroe Gallery

A new exhibition is marking the photographer’s 100th birthday with a look back at his extraordinary career.

Photographer Tony Vaccaro, who celebrates his 100th birthday on 20 December 2022, has lead a life as cinematic as the pictures he’s made. In honour of his 80-year career, gallerist Sid and Michelle Monroe are curating Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition, two major shows in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Featuring works from the photographer’s storied career, The Centennial Exhibition brings together images made while Vaccaro was serving on the frontlines of World War II, and later as a portrait and fashion photographer for Life, Flair, and Harper’s Bazaar during the golden age of magazines.

Whether photographing fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy in the atelier with Hollywood icon Eartha Kitt or art collector Peggy Guggenheim relaxing in a Venetian gondola, Vaccaro crafted exquisite portraits of the 20th century’s most influential artists, actors, filmmakers, leaders, and luminaries.

Tony’s sensitivity to his subjects was derived from his early hardship as an orphan in Italy,” say the Monroes, who began working with the photographer in 2016. At the age of four, both Vaccaro’s parents died, and he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle. His early years were marked by physical and emotional abuse, and as soon as World War II erupted, he returned to the U.S., the nation of his birth.

Vaccaro took up photography in high school, a skill that served him well when he was drafted to serve in the 83rd Infantry Division, nicknamed ‘Thunderbolt’. As a scout, Vaccaro photographed the frontlines of battle in Normandy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany – despite being wounded twice.

“After the war, Tony replaced the searing images of horror embedded in his memory by focusing on the splendour of life,” say the Monroes. “His experiences left a deep wound in his being, and in response he made a conscious decision to celebrate beauty and creativity.”


color photo of Eartha Kitt and Givenchy, Paris, 1961

Eartha Kitt and Givenchy, Paris, 1961

Comfortable with a full range of cameras in the studio and the field, the photographer could easily adapt to whatever the moment might demand. “Whenever possible, he preferred to spend days, if not weeks, with his subjects, to create a natural relationship between him and his subject,” the Monroes say.

Vaccaro, who has survived two bouts of Covid, remains incredibly active, maintaining his running practice, which he established as a high school athlete in the 1940s. Now enjoying a career renaissance, he has been enthusiastically involved in the exhibition preparations and is excited to share his work with new audiences.

“To this day, Tony speaks passionately about man’s inhumanity to man,” the Monroes say. “He is among the few remaining veterans of an actual fight against fascism, Nazism, and dictatorships.”

They share a quote from Vaccaro, whose life experience has taught him the necessity of unity: “We call each other German, French, Italian. There is no Italian blood. There is no French blood. It’s human blood. On this Earth there is one humanity. In a way, photography was my way of telling the world, ‘We have better things to do that to kill ourselves.’”



color photo of Extras in windows of building and sitting outside on the set of 8 1/2, Lazio, Italy, 1962

Extras on the set of 8 1/2, Lazio, Italy, 1962


Givenchy getting out of his car inParis, 1961

Givenchy Paris, 1961


Georgia O’Keeffe on her Abiquiu Portal with cow skull over doorway , NM 1960

Georgia O’Keeffe Abiquiu Portal, NM 1960


Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition is on view November 25, 2022 – January 15, 2023 at Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and December 13–18, 2022 at 21 Spring Street in New York City. 

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition

Via F-Stop

November 12, 2022


screen shot of F-Stop article on Tony Vaccaro Centennial exhibits in New York and Santa Fe with photo of 3 models with umbrellas in Finland, 1965

 


Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition

Santa Fe: Nov. 25, 2022-Jan. 15, 2023
New York City: Dec. 13 - 18, 2022


“Vaccaro is known for his photographs of WWII, which were the subject of a 2016 HBO documentary, and his editorial work for Life, Look, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and countless other publications. The exhibitions coincide with Tony Vaccaro 100! on view at the Museum für Photographie in Braunschweig, Germany. In both locations, Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition, will juxtapose the living legend’s powerful war images with the lyrical mid-century fashion, film, and pop culture photographs that came later. Vaccaro will be in attendance for a reception in New York. ”

Monroe Gallery

112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM
www.monroegallery.com

Friday, October 21, 2022

Public guided tour of the exhibition Tony Vaccaro 100! at the Museum of Photography Braunschweig

Via Museum of Photography Braunschweig


Tony Vaccaro 100!  Public guided tour

Sunday, 23.10.2022, 4 pm

Admission: 3,50€ / 2 €

black and white photograph of Georgia O'Keefe inside a car holding a piece of Swiss cheese up to her eye

Tony Vaccaro, 'Georgia O'Keeffe with Cheese, New Mexico, 1960' © Tony Vaccaro Studio, Courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography and the Tony Vaccaro Studio


In a public guided tour, the extensive work of the almost 100-year-old Tony Vaccaro will be presented.

Both the photographs he took during his time in World War 2 as a US soldier in the last years

of the war and his later works as a portrait photographer of the art and culture scene in the USA and

Europe are discussed.

More information here


Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition: New York - Santa Fe

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

New MFA exhibit explores world history through photography: "LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography,”

Via The Suffolk Journal

October 12, 2022

By Leo Woods

The Museum of Fine Arts opened its newest exhibit, “LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography,” on Oct. 9, allowing patrons to step back in time and experience some of the most pivotal moments of the 20th century captured on film. 

The exhibit, made in collaboration with Princeton University Art Museum, details the genesis of LIFE, which was published weekly from 1936-1972. Henry R. Luce, the founder of LIFE, took inspiration from European picture magazines to create a publication that would be both visually enticing and informative to the American people. His work was a success, as LIFE regularly reached 1 in 4 Americans during the years of its publication, according to the MFA.

As visitors walk through the exhibit, they see the process by which LIFE was developed and found its niche over time. With unique insight into the photography process and how stories were developed for the magazine, the exhibit seeks to examine how American views of the 20th century were shaped by magazines from the period. 

The works of over 30 photographers are featured in the exhibit, including Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Frank Dandrige and Gordon Parks. Each photographer’s signature style and vision are clear in their use of composition and perspective, from Bourke-White’s empowering portraits of female steelworkers in Indiana to Dandrige’s heartbreaking still at the bedside of Sarah Jean Collins, one of the victims of the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

One of the most striking parts of the exhibit is the section titled “Documenting War,” which shows how photojournalists for LIFE were on the front lines of World War II and the Vietnam War, capturing historical images that allowed Americans to see the unfiltered reality of conflict overseas. Capa was one of only four photographers permitted to document the storming of Normandy, France, and the slightly shaky picture of soldiers running up the beach through the waves was published in LIFE at least eight times, according to the caption underneath the image.

While LIFE sought to bring nuance to stories with their photography, the magazine’s audience primarily consisted of white, middle-class Americans, and the photo essays reflected the attitudes of that group. When George Rodger and Bourke-White’s haunting photos of the recently liberated German concentration camps were published in 1945, LIFE refused to identify victims of the Holocaust as Jewish, reinforcing the anti-semitic sentiment in the United States at the time.

LIFE’s pieces also portrayed the U.S. as a “savior” of individuals like Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps in the aftermath of the bombing at Pearl Harbor. The magazine published letters to the editor criticizing the inaccurate depiction of the camps and the unfair treatment of the incarcerated residents, but the majority of reader responses “expressed vehemently xenophobic anti-Japanese sentiments,” according to a caption beside images of the camps.

In an effort to highlight the bias and discrepancies still present in journalism today, the MFA has included immersive works by contemporary artists Alfredo Jaar, Alexandra Bell and Julia Wachtel dispersed throughout the exhibit. 

Jaar’s featured pieces include work from his Rwanda Project, which documented the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Jaar called the project an “exercise in representation,” challenging the international community’s lack of response to the genocide. Over 1 million Rwandans belonging to the Tutsi ethnic group were killed by Hutu militias during a 100-day period, and no outside governments intervened, much less acknowledged that it was happening.

In an effort to contextualize the scale of the genocide, Jaar created “Eyes of Nduwa yezu,” a display of 1 million picture slides of a young boy, Nduwayezu, who witnessed his parents’ murder by Hutu militia members. The piece is striking, the eyes of the young boy seem to bore into the viewer, challenging them to feel the despair he does.

Bell’s “Counternarrative” series examines the implicit bias and systemic racism present in reporting today. Side-by-side images of the front page of the New York Times show Bell’s edits in red ink, pointing out how whiteness is seen as innocent in the eyes of the press, especially in the case of Michael Brown Jr., a Black Missouri teenager killed by a white police officer in 2017. 

The MFA commissioned Wachtel to create a multimedia piece to go alongside images of Japanese internment camps from the 1940s, and the stage-like composition of the work creates a commentary on the politicization of mass media, as well as LIFE’s erasure of the truth behind the camps. Oil paintings of Gen. Douglas MacArthur cover a blurred photo of internment camp residents, showing how the U.S.’s military power superseded the humanity of individuals solely based on their race.

“LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography” offers a revolutionary insight into American history and culture, as well as explores the incredible impact publications like LIFE had on a global scale. Timed-entry tickets are required to view the exhibit, which is on display until Jan. 16, 2023.


Related: THE LIFE PHOTOGRAPHERS: Celebrating Monroe Gallery’s 20th Anniversary in Santa Fe

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Tony Vaccaro 100: A Life of a Photographer from War to Culture

 

The Museum für Photographie Braunschweig logo


Via Photography in Berlin

October 1, 2022

color photograph of Tony Vaccaro holding a test stip, NY, 1968


A Life of a Photographer from War to Culture

Curated by Barbara Hofmann-Johnson, Director Museum für Photographie Braunschweig.

The Museum für Photographie Braunschweig shows for the 100th Birthday of Tony Vaccaro (* December 20, 1922 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, lives in Long Island, NY) an exhibition of the American photographer of Italian descent and presents important and award-winning works from different creative phases. These include photographs taken during and after World War II in Europe and important portraits of artists, musicians, politicians and cultural figures.

With a special sense for composition and the connection to the outside space, fashion photographs are also part of Tony Vaccaro’s work. Some of the artistically staged fashion shots are part of the exhibition, especially those that were taken for a documentary for Marimekko, the Finnish design house in the 1960s, are particularly noteworthy.

The exhibition at the Museum für Photographie Braunschweig is created in cooperation and with the support of Tony Vaccaro Studio, New York City, USA and the Monroe Gallery of Photography Collection, Santa Fe, NM, USA.


Museum für Photographie Braunschweig

Helmstedter Straße 1 · 38102 Braunschweig
Opening hours: Tue – Fri 1 – 6 pm, Sat & Sun 11 am – 6 pm
Admission: 3,50 € / reduced 2,00 €. Happy Thursday: Free admission & extended opening hours until 8 pm & guided tour at 6 pm every first Thursday of the month.




Monroe Gallery of Photography will announce two additional major exhibits celebrating Tony Vaccaro's 100th birthday. "Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition" will be on view in Santa Fe, NM and New York, NY - details to be announced

Monday, September 19, 2022

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce major exhibitions celebrating Tony Vaccaro’s 100th birthday

 

Logo for Museum for Photography Braunschweig, Germany

Via Museum für Photographie Braunschweig · 

TONY VACCARO 100!

A Life of a Photographer from War to Culture

GI and woman looking at rubble of destroyed building after WWII in Frankfurt, Germany, 1947

Tony Vaccaro: Entering Germany, Frankfurt Germany, 1947
© Tony Vaccaro Studio, Courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography and the Tony Vaccaro Studio



The Museum für Photographie Braunschweig shows for the 100! Birthday of Tony Vaccaro  (born December 20, 1922 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, lives in Long Island, NY) an exhibition of the American photographer of Italian descent and presents important and award-winning works from different creative phases. These include photographs taken during and after World War II in Europe and important portraits of artists, musicians, politicians and cultural figures.


With a special sense for composition and the connection to the outside space, fashion photographs 
are also part of Tony Vaccaro’s work. Some of the artistically staged fashion shots are part of the exhibition, especially those that were taken for a documentary for Marimekko, the Finnish design house in the 1960s, are particularly noteworthy.


The exhibition at the Museum für Photographie Braunschweig is created in cooperation and with the support of Tony Vaccaro Studio, New York City, USA and the Monroe Gallery of Photography Collection, Santa Fe, NM, USA.


Museum für Photographie Braunschweig · Helmstedter Straße 1 · D-38102 Braunschweig


Supported by: City of Braunschweig, Foundation of Lower Saxony, MWK, DB, Wine Shop Bremer


Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce major exhibitions celebrating Tony Vaccaro’s 100th birthday. "Tony Vaccaro 100" is at the The Museum für Photographie Braunschweig in Germany October 1 - December 4, 200. "Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibition” opens in Santa Fe, NM on Friday, November 25, with Tony Vaccaro appearing remotely live from his New York home at 5:30 pm. The exhibition will continue through January 15, 2023.

A special satellite exhibit in New York City will be on view at the Monroe Gallery of Photography "pop up", 21 Spring Street, New York City, December 13 – 18. Tony Vaccaro will be in attendance on the evenings of December 14 – 17, RSVP required, please contact the Gallery.


Sunday, June 19, 2022

Monroe Gallery exhibit looks at history through Life’s photographs

 Via The Albuquerque Journal

By Kathaleen Roberts    June 19, 2022

black and white photograph of The Beatles lounging on pool chairs at swimming pool in Miami, 1964

The Beatles, Miami 1964,” at a private residence after their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Courtesy of Bob Gomel)

SANTA FE – When Sidney and Michelle Monroe stepped into the workplace of the great photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt decades ago, they were more than intimidated.

“There’s a picture of Hitler and Mussolini shaking hands in his office,” Michelle Monroe said. “We’re not peers.

“Honestly, we could barely catch our breath, we were so star-struck.”

That meeting in New York’s Time-Life building would launch a career of exhibiting some of the most pioneering photojournalists in the country. Monroe Gallery will celebrate the glory days of Life magazine with about 40 images by such photographic luminaries as Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Bob Gomel and Bill Ray through June 26.

Known as the father of photojournalism, Eisenstaedt is best recognized for his image of a sailor kissing a nurse in a dance-like dip during Times Square’s V-J celebration in 1945. When the Monroes approached him, he had never shown his work in a gallery before.

In 1963, Life assigned the photographer a photo essay on life in Paris.

“He didn’t know what he could do that Henri Cartier-Bresson hadn’t done,” Sidney Monroe said.

While he was walking the streets, Eisenstaedt spotted a playground with a puppet show of “St. George and the Dragon.” He crawled under the stage and began shooting the crowd from beneath the drape. The photographer captured the children in the audience, their facial expressions tumbling from delight into fear and horror.

“It’s almost timeless, aside from their clothing, it could be any time,” Sidney said. “It’s a great example of what a photographer does.”

Gomel was already in Miami to shoot the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight when his editors asked him to photograph the Beatles. The foursome had flown south to relax immediately after their 1964 “Ed Sullivan Show” debut. Gomel shot them sunbathing at a private home.

“The editor of Life was really interested in the world of pop culture,” Sidney said. “The Beatles would sell so many magazines.”

Carl Mydans had been captured by the invading Japanese when the Philippines fell during World War II. He was freed during a prisoner exchange in 1943.

In 1945, Mydans photographed the Japanese formal surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in front of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Mydans had also shot the famous image of MacArthur wading onto a Philippines beach.

“When news came of the formal surrender, it was bedlam,” Sidney Monroe said. Mydans approached a MacArthur aide to make sure he gained entry to the ship.

The photographer captured the iconic moment while he was straddling a cannon. As soon as he shot the photo, a sailor pulled him off.

“The U.S. officials came in wearing their day-to-day khakis, much to the displeasure of the Japanese,” Sidney Monroe said.

Bourke-White was the first photographer hired by Life.

When she photographed Mahatma Gandhi in 1946, he insisted she learn to spin in order to have an audience with him.

“He had no time to digress from his campaign to free India from British oppression,” Sidney said. “She needed him and he knew he needed her.”

Founded by Henry Luce, publisher of Time magazine, Life was long one of the most popular and imitated of American magazines, selling millions of copies a week. Published weekly from 1936 to 1972, it emphasized photography.

“They’re all in their very defining moments,” Sidney Monroe said. “The moments are in our heads because they’re part of our history.”

If you go

WHAT: “The LIFE Photographers”

WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe

WHEN: Through June 26

CONTACT: monroegallery.com, 505-992-0800

Monday, December 13, 2021

Stream "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro"

 

Santa Fe, NM – On December 20, 2021, Tony Vaccaro celebrates his 99th birthday, an inspiration to us all.

To help celebrate, we are offering limited free streaming downloads of the HBO documentary "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro". The film chronicles the life of a man who played two roles during World War II, both at great risk: a combat infantryman on the front lines and a photographer who took and developed roughly 8,000 photographs of the war. Contact Monroe Gallery for details, offer is limited.

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania on December 20, 1922, Tony is one of the few people alive who can claim to have survived the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19. Tony Vaccaro spent the first years of his life in the village of Bonefro, Italy after becoming an orphan; by age 10 he started taking pictures with a box camera. When World War II broke out he was ordered to return to the US, where he reunited with his sisters and joined his high school camera club. Drafted into the war, by June 1944, now a combat infantryman in the 83rd Infantry Division, he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach, six days after the first landings at Normandy. Denied access to the Signal Corps, Tony was determined to photograph the war, and had his portable 35mm Argus C-3 with him from the start. For the next 272 days he photographed his personal witness to the brutality of war.

Returning to the US, Tony started his career as a commercial photographer, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Look, Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Newsweek, and many more. Tony went on to become one the most sought after photographers of his day. By focusing on the splendor of life, Tony replaced the images of horror embedded in his eyes from war.

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to present a special exhibition celebrating the 99th birthday of this American hero and distinguished photographer. The exhibit of over 40 photographs spans Tony’s 80-year career and features several never-before-exhibited photographs. The exhibit continues on-line and in the Gallery through January 16, 2021.

poster promo of Underfire documentary


Friday, December 10, 2021

Voice of America: 98-Year-Old NYC Photographer Tony Vaccaro Shows Life as Is – From WWII to Today

 

Via Voice of America

December 9, 2021


98-year-old photographer Tony Vaccaro was a simple infantryman, but he unofficially photographed World War II for 272 days. Anna Nelson met with Vaccaro to talk about his role in documenting the war. Anna Rice narrates her story.









Friday, November 26, 2021

Tony Vaccaro at Monroe Gallery of Photography

 Via Pasatiempo, The Santa Fe New Mexican

November 26, 2020


color photo of fashion model on NY commuter train, 1960
Tony Vaccaro, The Fashion Train, NYC (1960), archival pigment print


Photographer Tony Vaccaro, the subject of a 2016 documentary by HBO Films, fought on the front lines during World War II as a combat infantryman in the 83rd Infantry Division. All the while he was documenting his first-hand experience with his camera.

After the war, Vaccaro distinguished himself as a photographer, capturing a spectrum of events and personalities, such as artist Georgia O’Keeffe, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and activist Coretta Scott King. His work appeared in numerous publications, including Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, and Newsweek.

Vaccaro, who’s about to turn 99, survived the Battle of Normandy and, more recently, a bout of COVID-19. He appears via live remote for his 99th Birthday Exhibition during a 5 p.m. reception on Friday, Nov. 26. The exhibit continues through Jan. 16. Masks and proof of vaccination required for the reception.

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., 505-992-0800, monroegallery.com