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.

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

 Via The NY Post

December 10, 2022

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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!”

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.”

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’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 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.”

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.

 

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

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.”

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.)
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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.

Tony Vaccaro The Centennial Exhibition New York Pop Up December 13-18, 2022

21 Spring Street, NY

Tony Vaccaro The Centennial Exhibition Santa Fe ongoing through January 15, 2023

112 Don Gaspar Avenue, Santa Fe, NM

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Empathy As A Perspective with Anne Wilkes Tucker

 

The Democratic Lens Scholar Lectures

Examining how images have shaped America’s collective memory and inspired individuals to participate in civic life.

Sunday, November 20

Livestream and La Fonda on the Plaza, Lumpkins Ballroom 100 E. San Francisco St. Santa Fe, NM 87501

Lectures are free and open to the public. Attend live online or in person at Santa Fe's La Fonda on the Plaza Hotel.

10-11 am | Photography & Restitution: The Civil Potential of the Image with Laura Wexler, Charles H. Farnam Professor of American Studies & Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Yale University

11-12 pm | WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Empathy As A Perspective with Anne Wilkes Tucker, Curator Emerita, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

12-1 pm | What Can’t Be Unseen: Photography & Activism with Kymberly Pinder, Ph.D., Dean, Yale School of Art, Yale University

1-1:30 pm| Q&A with Moderator Will Wilson, Photographer & Program Head of Photography, Santa Fe Community College

Reserve here

Anne Wilkes Tucker is one of the four authors of War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath, a 612-page survey of images made of wars, from the Crimean War (1853-1856) through the Iraq War (2003-2011). The 2012 book was produced to document Tucker’s monumental exhibit of images of war at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Tucker will speak on War/Photography: Empathy as a Perspective as one of three scholars presenting at a Nov. 20 Review Santa Fe symposium called The Democratic Lens: Photography and Civic Engagement, sponsored by CENTER and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The symposium is free and can be attended online or in person.

Tucker will discuss how empathy plays a largely unexamined role in war, including for photographers who become involved with their subjects after photographing them. For example, one Los Angeles Times photographer took time off from his job to take a soldier he had photographed who was suffering from PTSD to a rehabilitation center and stayed with him for a month, Tucker says.

“I just want people to understand, when they get all ‘rah-rah’ about war, that the war doesn’t end for soldiers,” she says. “There is still a soldier a day in the U.S. who kills him- or herself.” 

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

 

Via Museum für Photographie Braunschweig · 

TONY VACCARO 100!

A Life of a Photographer from War to Culture

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.

Tony Vaccaro, who photographed World War II in Europe describes 6 of his photos that reveal the 'insanity of war'

 Via Business Insider

Memorial Day, May 31, 2021

A dead GI in Germany's Hurtgen Forest in 1944. 

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Michelantonio "Tony" Vaccaro wanted to serve his country with a camera during World War II, so he tried to join the US Army Signal Corps. But under Uncle Sam's rules, the 20-year-old draftee was too young for that branch.

So Vaccaro, the orphaned son of Italian immigrants, became a private first class in the 83rd Infantry Division. By June 1944, days after the first wave of 156,000 Allied troops descended on the beaches of Normandy, Vaccaro landed on Omaha Beach, where he saw row after row of dead soldiers in the sand.

Vaccaro was armed with an M1 rifle. He also brought along his personal camera: A relatively compact Argus C3 he'd purchased secondhand for $47.50 and had become fond of using as a high-school student in New York.

In addition to fighting on the front lines during the Battle of Normandy and the ensuing Allied advance, Vaccaro photographed what he was seeing. At night, he'd develop rolls of film, mixing chemicals in helmets borrowed from fellow soldiers. He'd hang the wet negatives on tree branches to dry and then carry them with him.

When he had enough to fill a package, he'd generally mail them home to his sisters in the US for safekeeping and to ensure the images would survive even if he did not.

                                Then-GI Tony Vaccaro on the wing of a B-17 Bomber in 1944. 

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

From 1944 to 1945, he moved through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.

Along the way, he took photographs that few others — even the press and Signal Corps photographers — were in a position to take: a fellow soldier's last step before shrapnel tore through him, a jubilant kiss between a GI and a young French girl in a newly liberated town, and many stomach-churning portraits of ransacked corpses that still haunt him.

During 272 days at war, he captured thousands of photos. After the Allied victory, he felt sickened and debilitated by the devastation he saw. He wasn't ready to return to the US. And he never wanted to photograph armed conflict again.

He bought a Jeep and traveled with his camera, eventually photographing brighter moments, like the reconstruction of Europe and the beauty in the lives of famous artists and everyday people.

Vaccaro went on to make a name as a fashion and culture photographer. He traveled the world shooting for magazines like Look and Life and taking portraits of bigwigs including John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Georgia O'Keeffe, and many more.

A half-century would pass before Vaccaro began publishing the bulk of his surviving wartime photos. The surviving images have been shared widely, including in the 2016 HBO documentary "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC. Tony Vaccaro," in which Vaccaro revisits the history that he had to break Army rules to chronicle.

Tony Vaccaro. Manolo Salas/courtesy of Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro, now 98, survived a bout with COVID-19 last spring that put him in the hospital.

He continues roaming his neighborhood photographing everyday people and selling prints through Monroe Gallery of Photography. From his Queens, New York, studio more than seven decades after World War II, he closes his eyes and thinks of the brutality he documented as an infantryman.

"I see death," Vaccaro told Insider. "Death that should not happen."

Below, he describes six of his photos that he says capture "the insanity of war."

'White Death', Near Ottré, Belgium, January 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro developed the roll containing this image while on leave in 1945. He remembers calling this photograph "Death In The Snow" at first, later deciding that "White Death" was a more "elegant" and fitting name to honor Pvt. Henry Tannenbaum's service and sacrifice. Tannenbaum was killed in action on January 11, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge.

"When I first took this photo of a GI dead in the snow, I was not aware of who he was. What I did was to chip the snow away and look for his right arm, because in those days, [on] the right arm we carried our dog tags. He was Pvt. Henry Irving Tannenbaum. He was one of the soldiers who fought there, just like me. We fought in the snow. He died in the snow. He was my friend. I knew he had a son. … Many years later I got a call from his son."

'Gott Mit Uns', Hürtgen Forest, Germany, 1944

The burned body of a German tank driver, as seen through Vaccaro's lens.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

.

"He's burning. This was frontline. You can smell him. We knocked out his German tank. We knocked it out, and he jumped out of there and fell dead in front of us. He was the pilot of this tank. Similar age [to me]. Here he's gone. … But [before the photograph] I heard him scream, 'Muter, muter.' He was calling for his mother."

"I took cover [by lying down next to him] and read his belt buckle: 'Gott mit uns.' … It means 'God is with us.' [Before the war] I had seen people that die and go to the church, and from church they go to the cemetery, like my father when I was four. This was a different death."

'Final Steps of Jack Rose', Ottré, Belgium, January 11, 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro captured this image of a soldier he identifies as US Army Pvt. 1st Class Jack Rose of the 83rd Infantry Division, still upright, just after shrapnel from a mortar explosion severed his spine. The explosion, visible between Rose and the fence, threw Vaccaro back many feet. Rose, 23, was killed in action.

"That was Jack Rose. The last step. I was photographing him when this shell comes and explodes. He got killed there, in the village. … The shell could have come to me, too. I was lucky."

'Rhineland Battle', Near Walternienburg, Germany, April 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro says the streaking on some of his war photos comes from the grueling conditions he was in — he didn't have time to properly process and store his work in combat — and possibly from water damage due to a flood in the office where the images were stored after the war.

"We were going forward when a shell comes in, in the back, and explodes. This was Rhineland Battle. I was in a hole as the mortar exploded. I raised my arm up with the camera in my hand above the hole to catch this picture. If that shell had come 20 yards over, I was with these two [soldiers seen in the picture], and my hole was here, and if the shell came [where the two soldiers were or where Vaccaro was], I wouldn't be here talking today."

The Family Back Home', Hürtgen Forest, Germany, January 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

When Vaccaro encountered this dead German soldier, it appeared that other American soldiers had already looted his valuables.

"This is a man who we killed in frontline [fighting]. … That was it. The family back home. A dead German soldier with the pictures he was carrying of his family. … Of course I had photos of my family too. … It reminds me of the tragedy of mankind. He's not a German. He's a human being."

"We just must stop using 'I'm Italian. I'm French. I'm Spanish. I'm German.' That's what makes us enemies of each other. We're all humans. In Spain. In Germany. It's a terrible mistake that man has made. We are humans. And nothing else."

'Defeated Soldier', Frankfurt, Germany, March 1947.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro captured this image after the war, while photographing the reconstruction of Europe for Stars.

"This man came back [from being a prisoner of war in the US]. He's crying. … He gave up. You see where his family had been. The war is over. He came back, and his house had been destroyed. That's why I call this the defeated soldier. He was German. … Later I was told that he lived here."

"The point is, you see, on this Earth there is only one species, one church. Unfortunately we take this one species and create hundreds and thousands of churches, and each one is different from the next. And that's why man is not attaining peace yet."

View the Tiny Vaccaro collection here

Watch the video "Tony Vaccaro at 98" here 

Monroe Gallery Sponsors FREE Streaming of "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro"

 

In association with the current exhibition "Tony Vaccaro at 98", Monroe Gallery is pleased to offer FREE streaming of the acclaimed documentary "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro". 

This offer is limited, please contact the Gallery for details.

UNDERFIRE: The Untold Story of Tony Vaccaro (trailer). from Cargo Film & Releasing on Vimeo.

In 1943, with the Allied invasion of Europe imminent, a newly drafted 21-year old Tony Vaccaro applied to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He had developed a passion for photography and knew he wanted to photograph the war. “They said I was too young to do this,” Tony says, holding his finger as if taking a photo, “but not too young to do this,” turning his finger forward, pulling a gun trigger. Not one to be denied, Tony went out and purchased a $47.00 Argus C3, and carried the camera into the war with him. He would fight with the 83rd Infantry Division for the next 272 days, playing two roles – a combat infantryman on the front lines and a photographer who would take roughly 8,000 photographs of the war.

In the decades that followed the war, Tony would go on to become a renowned commercial photographer for magazines such as Look, Life, and Flair, but it is his collection of war photos, images that capture the rarely seen day-to-day reality of life as a soldier, that is his true legacy. Tony kept these photos locked away for decades in an effort to put the war behind him, and it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that this extraordinary body of work was first discovered and celebrated in Europe. In the United States, however, Tony has yet to receive his due and few people have heard of him.

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.

Though the narrative spine of the film is a physical journey in which Tony brings us to the places in Europe where many of his most powerful photos were taken, over the course of the film we also trace Tony’s emotional journey from a young GI eager to record the war to an elderly man who, at 93, has become a pacifist, increasingly horrified at man’s ability to wage war. Tony believed fiercely that the Allied forces in WWII were engaged in a just war, but he vowed never to take another war photo the day the war ended, and he didn’t.

In addition to numerous interviews with Tony, interviewees include Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalists Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario; Anne Wilkes Tucker, a photography curator and curator of the comprehensive exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY; James Estrin, a Senior Photographer for the New York Times and editor of the Times’ Lens blog; and John G. Morris, who was the photo editor of Life Magazine during World War II and was Robert Capa’s editor.

Tony Vaccaro celebrates his 98th birthday on December 20, 2020.

Veteran's Day: Tony Vaccaro at 98

UNDERFIRE: The Untold Story of Tony Vaccaro (trailer). from Cargo Film & Releasing on Vimeo.

 

Tony Vaccaro, nearing age 98, is is one of the few people alive who can claim to have survived the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19. A new exhibition, "Tony Vaccaro at 98", illustrates his will to live and advance the power of beauty in this life. The exhibit opens on-line and in the Gallery Friday, November 20.

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania on December 20, 1922, Tony Vaccaro spent the first years of his life in the village of Bonefro, Italy after his family left America under threat from the Mafia. His mother died during childbirth a few years before tuberculosis claimed his father. By age 5, he was an orphan in Italy, raised by an uncaring aunt and enduring beatings from an uncle. By World War II he was an American G.I., drafted into the war, and 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. 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.

After the war, Tony remained in Germany to photograph the rebuilding of the country for Stars And Stripes magazine. Returning to the US in 1950, 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.

As an antidote to man’s inhumanity, Tony focused his lens on those who gave of themselves: artists, writers, movie stars, and the beauty of fashion. By focusing on the splendor of life, Tony replaced the images of horror embedded in his eyes. 

Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography is exhibiting more than 50 photographs by the acclaimed photographer Tony Vaccaro

Photographer follows resurgent career back to Santa Fe with exhibit

The Albuquerque Journal

By Kathaleen Roberts / Journal Staff Writer

Sunday, November 18th, 2018

Georgia O'Keeffe with Cheese, New Mexico, 1960

©Tony Vaccaro

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When photographer Tony Vaccaro first met Georgia O’Keeffe in 1960, the great artist refused to speak to him for five days.

On assignment from LOOK magazine, Vaccaro had traveled to New Mexico by train with art editor Charlotte Willard.

O’Keeffe had been expecting a different photographer, one of her favorites, such as Ansel Adams, Todd Webb or Richard Avedon.

Trying his best to charm her, Vaccaro cooked O’Keeffe a steak and fixed her broken washing machine, to no avail.

Suddenly, the topic turned to bullfighting. Vaccaro mentioned he had met the great Spanish matador Manolette.

The artist pivoted in her seat to face him. She never looked at Willard again.

“When O’Keeffe found out, she kind of embraced me and that’s when we became the greatest friends,” the 95-year-old Vaccaro said in a telephone interview from his home in Long Island City, N.Y.

Givenchy by the Pool, South of Paris, France, 1961 

©Tony Vaccaro

Santa Fe’s Monroe Gallery of Photography is exhibiting more than 50 photographs by the acclaimed photographer in “Tony Vaccaro: Renaissance,” opening Friday, Nov. 23. The gallery will offer a free screening of the 2016 HBO documentary “Under Fire: The Private Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro” at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 24, followed by a question-and-answer session with the photographer. The show will hang through Jan. 27, 2019.

After that initially frosty meeting, Vaccaro spent a month in Abiquiú photographing O’Keeffe, producing some of her most iconic portraits.

The photographer captured “Georgia O’Keeffe with cheese” while they were traveling. The artist looks playfully at the camera through a hole in a piece of Swiss cheese.

“We had decided to go to the desert for a picnic,” Vaccaro said. “The desert she liked was White Sands. I arranged the catering, the salad, everything, but it began to rain, so we moved into the car. So we had the picnic sitting in the car. I was driving; I looked back and I saw her looking at me through a hole in the cheese.”

Vaccaro kept in touch with O’Keeffe over the years.

“She had an opening in 1971 at the Whitney Museum,” he said. “We were talking. She pulled me away and said, ‘Tony, let’s go see our picture,’ which is the famous one where she holds a famous painting she had made.”

Georgia O’Keeffe with painting, New Mexico, for LOOK, 1960  ©Tony Vaccaro

Vaccaro’s career across the decades included war photography, fashion photography and celebrity portraiture.

ne fashion assignment featured a collection of hats. Vaccaro spotted a spiral-shaped hat resembling a certain building. He asked the slinky model Isabella Albonico to pose in the chapeau in front of the Guggenheim Museum.

He said Albonico sported the longest neck he had ever seen.

“You look at Isabella’s face and you know she thinks it’s funny,” he added.

“I saw Frank Lloyd Wright design the Guggenheim from scratch,” Vaccaro continued. “I photographed it as it went along.”

Guggenheim Hat, New York, 1960

©Tony Vaccaro

The HBO documentary about Vaccaro’s war photography has kindled a career resurgence. He will turn 96 on Dec. 20.

Vaccaro was drafted into World War II at the age of 21. By the summer of 1944 he was on a boat heading toward Omaha Beach six days after the first landings at Normandy. Vaccaro was determined to photograph the war and brought his portable 35mm Argus C-3. He fought on the front lines, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches.

The result was “White Death, Pvt. Henry Irving Tannebaum, Ottre, Belgium,” 1945, one of the most famous photographs of the war.

“I took that picture and at that time this man had a son who was 1 year old,” Vaccaro said. “Fifty years later I got a phone call saying, ‘I am the son of Mr. Tannebaum.’ He said, ‘Would you take me where you took the picture of my father dead in the snow?'”

He did, only to find the spot had disappeared.

“It was a field of Christmas trees the owner was selling to Portugal,” Vaccaro said. “Fifty years later, it was growing Christmas trees. And it so happens Tannebaum means Christmas tree.”

If you go

WHAT: “Tony Vaccaro: Renaissance”

WHEN: Public reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 23. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily through Jan. 27, 2019.

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

HOW MUCH: Free at monroegallery.com, 505-992-0800

“UNDERFIRE: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro" Now on DVD

UNDERFIRE: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro DVD with Extras – PRE-ORDER NOW

Pfc. Tony Vaccaro played two roles during WWII: combat infantryman and unofficial photographer. At great personal risk, he shot and developed 8,000 photographs from the front lines that showed the camaraderie, the bravery and the tragedy of war – in a way no one had done before. Directed by Max Lewkowicz. An HBO Film.

71 Minutes. DVD Extras included. Closed Captions.

Pre-Order Now. Expected Delivery December 2017.
ORDER Here  $23.99

Directed by Max Lewkowicz (the New York Emmy-winning Morgenthau), UNDERFIRE: The Untold Story of PFC. Tony Vaccaro is the remarkable story of WWII infantryman and photographer Tony Vaccaro, who created one of the most comprehensive, haunting and intimate photographic records of combat.

Through interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers and Vaccaro himself, this moving film examines issues raised by witnessing and recording conflict, following him as he retraces his journey across Europe as a soldier, sharing the stories behind some of his most powerful pictures along the way.

Featuring contributions from Pulitzer Prize-winning NY Times photographer Tyler Hicks, Anne Tucker, curator of the Fine Art Museum of Houston, James Estrin, of the Times, and John Morris, former photo editor of Life Magazine and Robert Capa. Executive Produced by Tim Van Patten (Game of Thrones, Sopranos). An HBO Film.

*Emmy Nominated for Outstanding Historical Documentary.
DVD Special Feature Extras Include:

– Tony Vaccaro Photographer (Alternate Segment)
– Tony with Mike in Normandy (Extended Scene)
– Omaha Beach Landing (Deleted Scene)
– Moment of Death (Extended Scene)
– Gott Mit Uns (In God We Trust) (Extended Scene)
– 83rd Infantry Division Europe Signal Corp Film

Engrossing, unexpectedly moving..." -Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"Tony Vaccaro's life was forged by pain and courage. Passion saved his life and enriched ours." - Tim Van Patten, director Game of Thrones, The Sopranos
"No one got closer than an infantryman in war, and no one got closer than Tony." -Alex Kershaw, Historian and New York Times best-selling author, "The Liberator"

Monroe Gallery of Photography is pleased to represent the fine art photography of Tony Vaccaro. "Tony Vaccaro at 95" will be on view in the gallery November 24 - January 21, 2018.

Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro nominated for Outstanding Historical Documentary Emmy

Underfire: the Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro

is available on demand from HBO here.

Tony Vaccaro: War and Peace is on exhibit at Monroe Gallery of Photography through September 17, 2017. M

Monroe Gallery will sponsor a special free encore screening of "Underfire" in Santa Fe on Saturday, August 26 at 3:45 pm at the Center For Contemporary Arts  Cinematheque. Please call the CCA box office for tickets; seating is limited.

NOMINEES FOR THE 38th ANNUAL NEWS & DOCUMENTARY EMMY® AWARDS ANNOUNCED

Outstanding Historical Documentary

 HBO Documentary Films        

HBO UNDERFIRE: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro 

Director/Producer Max Lewkowicz
Executive Producers Gianna  Cerbone –Teoli, Sheila Nevins, Ann  Oster, Tim  Van Patten
Senior Producer Jacqueline Glover
Producer Valerie  Thomas

NOMINEES FOR THE 38th ANNUAL NEWS & DOCUMENTARY EMMY® AWARDS ANNOUNCED  
Charles Osgood to be honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

October 5th Award Presentation at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in NYC
 New York, N.Y. – July 25, 2017 – Nominations for the 38th Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards were announced today by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS).  The News & Documentary Emmy Awards will be presented on Thursday, October 5th, 2017, at a ceremony at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in the Time Warner Complex at Columbus Circle in New York City. The event will be attended by more than 1,000 television and news media industry executives, news and documentary producers and journalists. Awards will be presented in 49 categories.

 “Many say we’re in a ‘golden age’ of television and I would argue that the incredible growth of quality, in-depth reporting in broadcast journalism and documentary filmmaking has helped drive that change,” said Bob Mauro, President, NATAS. “We live in a continually-connected world where a tweet can set off a firestorm that travels around the world in seconds. These awards are a tribute to the outstanding work being done by these nominees who provide the viewer with thorough, fact-checked reporting, examining the stories of the day from multiple perspectives while never wavering in their quest to provide us with the truth about world events. It is with great pleasure that The National Academy honors the achievements of these many organizations and individuals.  It is an added delight to honor the one-of-a-kind broadcasting career of Charles Osgood, who through his decades as host of the ‘Osgood File’ and as the anchor of ‘CBS Sunday Morning,’ has graced many a news story with his innate ability to engage his audience with humor, warmth and credibility.”  

The 38th Annual News & Documentary Emmy® Awards honors programming distributed during the calendar year 2016. 

The list of nominees is also available on the National Television Academy's website: www.emmyonline.tv

Via Emmyonline.com

SAVE THE DATES JUNE 30/JULY 1: TONY VACCARO IN SANTA FE

Kiss of Liberation: Sergeant Gene Costanzo kneels to kiss a little girl during spontaneous celebrations in the main square of the town of St. Briac, France, August 14, 1944

94-year Old Tony Vaccaro travels to Santa Fe for screening of documentary and exhibit  

Santa Fe, NM -- Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce a major exhibition of 50photographs by Tony Vaccaro. The exhibit opens with a public reception for Tony Vaccaro on Friday, June 30 from 5 – 7 PM. The exhibit continues through September 17.  

Monroe Gallery will sponsor a free screening of  HBO Films' “Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro” at CCA on Saturday, July 1, starting at 3:45 pm. The screening will be followed by a Q & A with Tony Vaccaro moderated by former senior editor and reporter for LIFE magazine, Richard “Dick” Stolley. (Seating is limited, RSVP required to Monroe Gallery by June 28.)

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

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania on December 20, 1922, Tony 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. When World War II broke out, the American Ambassador in Rome ordered Tony to return to the States. He settled in with his sisters in New Rochelle, NY where he joined his high school camera club.

A year later, at the age of 21, Tony was drafted into the war, and 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. 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, Tony fought on the front lines of the war. He entered Germany in December 1944, a private in the Intelligence Platoon, tasked with going behind enemy lines at night.

 After the war, Tony remained in Germany to photograph the rebuilding of the country for Stars And Stripes magazine. Returning to the US in 1950, 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, photographing everyone from Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren to Pablo Picasso and Frank Lloyd Wright. He visited Georgia O’Keefe in Abiquiu in 1960 on assignment for LOOK magazine.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1960

Now 94, Tony still carries a camera and puts in six or seven hours without a break; creating prints in his darkroom and identifying jobs for his staff. Tony has won numerous honors and awards,  including 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).

Tony Vaccaro

Since retiring in 1982, Tony has been exhibited over 250 times and has published or been the subject of ten books and two major films. In 2014, the Tony Vaccaro Museum  was inaugurated in Bonefro (Italy). Tony’s photographs are in numerous private and public collections including The Metropolitan Museum in New York, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Library of Congress in Washington.

Tuesday To-Do in NYC: Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro Discussion at ICP

Via ICP

World War II, Tony Vaccaro played two risky roles, serving as a combat infantryman on the front lines, as well as a photographer who shot nearly 8,000 photographs. Though he began as a young GI eager to record the war, he vowed never to take another war photo on the day the conflict ended, horrified by what he had seen.

Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro chronicles the life and vision of this remarkable man, exploring how photography defines the way the public perceives armed conflict, and revealing the sheer difficulty of survival while taking photos in a war zone.

Clips from the film will be shown, followed by a panel discussion. (The entire film will not be shown.)

Panelists

• Tony Vaccaro
• Max Lewkowicz
• James Estrin

Bios

With a $47 camera and developing the negatives in his helmet at night, World War II infantryman Tony Vaccaro took nearly 8,000 photographs on the frontline, creating one of the most comprehensive, haunting, and intimate photographic records of combat of all time. In the decades that followed the war, Tony would go on to become a renowned commercial photographer for magazines such as Look, Life, and Flair, capturing everyone from Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren to Pablo Picasso and John F. Kennedy. Tony's work is currently on display at a retrospective in Caen, France and housed in a permanent museum in his honor in Bonefro, Italy. His work is represented by Tony Vaccaro Studio in New York and he is the subject of HBO Documentary Underfire: The Untold story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro, premiering November 14, 2016.

Max Lewkowicz, founder and owner of Dog Green Productions and director of Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro, has written, directed, and produced feature films and hundreds of productions for network and public television, museums, and multinational organizations. He is the recipient of a New York Emmy for his feature film Morganthau, as well as the Silver Screen Award at the U.S. International Film and Video Festival, the grand prize of The Chicago International Film Festival, and the 2003 Award of Excellence from the National Association of Museum Exhibitions.

James Estrin is a Senior Staff Photographer for the New York Times. He is also a founder of Lens, the Times's photography blog, and co-edits it with David Gonzalez. Mr. Estrin has worked for the Times since 1987 and was part of a Pulitzer Prize winning team in 2001. He is a co-executive producer of the movie Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro, which will appear on HBO in November 2016. He teaches at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and the School of Visual Arts Digital Photography Program as well as at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado. Mr. Estrin attended the Advanced Studies Program at the International Center of Photography from 1979 to 1980.

Event Hashtags

#ICPtalks
#ICPMuseum
#ICPalumni

Full details here.


View Tony Vaccaro's photographs at Monroe Gallery of Photography

Tony Vaccaro: War, Peace, Beauty - A Pop Up Retrospective

© Tony Vaccaro: The Violinist, Venice, Italy, 1947

TONY VACCARO: WAR PEACE BEAUTY
A pop-up photographic exhibit, in association with the Monroe Gallery of Photography
November 11 – 21, 2016
10:00 am to 6:00 pm, Mondays through Saturdays; 12 - 6 on Sundays
508 W 26th Street, Loft 5G, New York, NY 10001
Also on view at Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM

www.monroegallery.com

Essay by Peter Frank from the Catalog TONY VACCARO: WAR, PEACE, BEAUTY

When our lives and our communications were based on a simpler equation than they are now – when there were no social media posts suspended in a zone of truthiness and selfies took a week to come back from the camera store – our relation to the big news and big names of the day was a distant one. Pictures from wars were ominous and dramatic; pictures of celebrities were glamorous and iconic; fashion shots were staged in places we never knew could exist. These people and places and events impacted our lives indirectly – closely enough to get us to vote and go to the movies, but at enough of a remove as to float somewhere between the real and the imagined, the now, the soon, and the later. Time elapsed between the taking and the delivering of the photograph, which gave the photographer just enough room to make a good picture out of a good image – and a good story out of that. This is an entirely different approach to reportorial photography than we’re used to these days; it allowed photographs of urgency and beauty to be artful as well as truthful. Major periodicals were built on this approach, and for decades brought both the world and the brilliance of the people who photographed it to a huge and hungry audience.

Tony Vaccaro is one of these brilliant photographers, one of the last. He may have lived long enough to see his values all but swallowed up by the vacuity of today’s globalized and instantaneous sociobabble; but Vaccaro has also lived long enough to see his own work, along with his peers’ from the golden age of photojournalism, enshrined as examples of the-news-as-art. Vaccaro was adept at conveying what a portrait subject meant to her or his civilization with the same immediacy invested in what a tank rolling through a town meant. Both images had a monumental right-thereness, the moment at once fleeting and eternal. And such images retain that vitality and profundity to this day.

Vaccaro’s early life was spent between the United States, where he was born in Pennsylvania in 1922, and Italy, where his parents’ families resided. In 1939, with the formation of the Axis, Tony and his sisters reclaimed their American passports and returned Stateside. Encouraged by a high school art teacher in suburban New York, Vaccaro discovered himself as a photographer at age 20 – just in time to enter the army and be sent over to England with the 83rd Infantry Division. The “Thunderbolt Division” landed on Omaha Beach two weeks after D-Day and fought its way into Germany, participating in the Battle of the Bulge. As a frontline scout, Vaccaro had both time and inclination to compile photographic documentation of combat, army life, and the newly liberated Europeans he encountered. Discharged from the army in September 1945, Vaccaro stayed in Germany until 1949, working as a photographer for (among other news services) Weekend, the Sunday supplement of Army newspaper Stars and Stripes. His documentation of postwar life throughout Europe was as reverberant as his combat-zone work had been, and – recording as it does both momentous political occasions and everyday life in a continent reduced to rubble – as much of a contribution to history.

Returning to the United States, Vaccaro embarked upon a career as a feature and fashion photographer. This was at a time when glossy weekly publications, with their emphasis on the visual, comprised a form of communication distinct from, complementary to, and every bit as  successful as daily newspapers. Vaccaro spent more than two decades contributing to such magazines as Life, Look, Town and Country, Harper’s Bazaar, Newsweek, Venture, Quick, and Flair, working out of Rome as well as New York and proving equally adept at portraiture, fashion, and action photography. Indeed, many of his published photographs in various genres have proven signal images of the postwar era, etched into the public’s memory as deeply as those of Arnold Newman, Margaret Bourke-White, or Vaccaro’s friend W. Eugene Smith. People know Gwen Verdon, Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, and Ali MacGraw through his lens as much as they do through the lens of filmmakers; his photo series on Georgia O’Keeffe culminated in an unforgettable picture of the painter holding an abstract painting before the landscape that inspired it. Vaccaro’s vast inventory includes many more such photographs, published and unpublished. In his day he was one of the more sensitive photographers of artists, whether capturing a pensive Jackson Pollock in his studio, a stolid Giorgio de Chirico in raking light, or Frank Lloyd Wright gesturing like a conductor while lecturing at Taliesin. Vaccaro’s postwar portrayals of Europeans, especially Italians, capture in still photography the gritty but poignant neo-realist spirit of filmmakers like Vittorio de Sica and Luchino Visconti. His often experimental fashion shoots play on the animated patterns and extravagant contours coming out of European fashion houses in the 1950s and ‘60s. No matter who they are, Vaccaro seems to empathize with the thoughts and spirits of his subjects, endowing his pictures with a doubled allure for the viewer: you wish you’d been there even as you feel you somehow had been. This allure is only heightened by Vaccaro’s exquisite compositional sense, a formal elegance that calls attention to the subject rather than to itself even as it pervades everything. As Vaccaro has said, “I was born with this idea in my head that every photograph has an order. I have always believed in this. Without geometry, I don’t do photography. Each photograph must be in the geometry.”

As the glossy weeklies (the fashion magazines excepted) waned in prominence in the 1970s, Vaccaro worked less and less with them until officially retiring in 1982. Of course, he has not put his camera down for an instant since, adding steadily to an oeuvre that now numbers some half-a-million pictures. About to celebrate his 94th birthday, Vaccaro is still very much among us. Despite many honors in Europe and America, however, despite numerous exhibitions and upwards of a dozen publications, Vaccaro’s remains a name just beyond the public tongue. We know so many of his images, we respond so readily to his intimate connection with his subjects and his innate ability to compose a picture, but we can’t quite place the signature. The experts know him, historians cite him, his peers laud him as their equal, and those who would keep such inventive photojournalism alive in our Instagram culture turn to him for inspiration. But only now, with a new television documentary and new exhibitions and publications, are the rest of us coming to recognize Tony Vaccaro, not just as one of many cameras in the crowd but as an artist, artisan, reporter and story-teller with his own style and spirit – and, again, author of some of the quintessential images of the postwar era.

— Peter Frank

For further information please contact Monroe Gallery of Photography.