Blind Magazine: How Tony Vaccaro Used Photography as the Antidote to Inhumanity
L'Oeil de la Photographie: Tony Vaccaro at 98
Art Daily: Exhibition Celebrates the 98th Birthday of Renowned Photographer Tony Vaccaro
Pasatiempo: Photography Under Fire: Tony Vacarro
View the exhibition on-line here, together with short bio film
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The New Mexican's Weekly Magazine of Arts, Entertainment, and Culture
November 20, 2020
By Jason Strykowski
Private First Class Tony Vaccaro, of the 83rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, taught himself to take photographs while under enemy fire. Deployed for 272 days in the Western Front during World War II, Vaccaro snapped 8,000 pictures. Many were of his fellow American soldiers. Others captured street scenes of war-torn France and Germany. “Bullets came right toward me, but somehow the one that kills never came about,” Vaccaro says. “I was scratched by bullets a few times, but I never had a bullet that injured me seriously.” Vaccaro survived the war to become a prolific and successful photographer.
“He’s among the most versatile photographers of his generation because he photographed war under live fire — European-style street photography — but, then fashion, storytelling, and documentary,” says the co-owner of Monroe Gallery, Sid Monroe. “He was game for any assignment.” Over time, Vaccaro would receive many.
To celebrate Vaccaro’s upcoming birthday, a new retrospective exhibition on his work opens at the Monroe Gallery on Friday, Nov. 20, called Tony Vaccaro at 98. To mark the occasion, the gallery holds a Zoom call with Vaccaro at 5:30 p.m. that day.
In April, Vaccaro fell ill with CoViD-19. He dismissed the illness as a mere “cough,” and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. As we spoke, he pointed out photographs in his Long Island City home and studio. All told, his archive holds hundreds of thousands of negatives, and the number keeps growing. He still goes out most days and captures the city using the same Leica he purchased in Germany 70 years ago.
Vaccaro was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in 1922 and later moved to Italy following the death of his parents. He returned to the United States and was later drafted into the Army. Vaccaro already had his first camera and hoped to employ his skills for the Signal Corps, but he was told that he was too young. He reasoned that if he could squeeze a rifle trigger, he could squeeze a shutter button, but the Signal Corps was not convinced. Vaccaro was assigned to the infantry and brought his lightweight Argus C3 with him. (The little camera was often referred to as “the brick” for its rectangular shape.)
At the time, other war photographers moved slowly and carried bulky equipment. Often, they were forced to stage their pictures, reenacting important moments. Vaccaro, though, was a soldier first and photographer second. The fight was his priority, and he only took photos when he wasn’t forced to hold his rifle. When Vaccaro could shoot, he captured the brutal realties of war because he lived through them. “I shot from anywhere,” Vaccaro says. “From a foxhole. Standing up. Lying down. From the top of the trees. I would climb trees and take pictures there.”
There’s a powerful rawness to Vaccaro’s war photos. The black-andwhite images are steeped in contrast, not just between light and dark, but also between serenity and atrocity. “You have to be cold-blooded. You have to be a son of a bitch,” Vaccaro says of taking pictures during a war, in the documentary Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro (2016). Although the scenes of warfare were tragic, Vaccaro put aside his feelings and acted as the consummate photographer.
His favorite photo, though, is one that depicts hope and love. The Kiss of Liberation features an American sergeant kneeling and kissing a small girl on the cheek in St. Briac, France, in 1944. The photo brims with compassion and perhaps pointed toward Vaccaro’s future in the medium.
“After the war, he decided to stick with photography because he knew he had an eye for it,” says Tony Vaccaro archives manager and Vaccaro’s daughter-in-law, Maria Vaccaro. “He signed up to work for a magazine run by the Army called Stars and Stripes, and he became one of the staffers.” Vaccaro, in his early 20s, purchased a used Army Jeep and traveled across Europe to document the recovering continent.
Vaccaro had the experience, skill, and, apparently the boldness to walk into the New York offices of Look and Life magazines to ask for a job. One of his photos, a dead solider buried in the snow, impressed an editor at the magazines, who asked Vaccaro if he could shoot celebrities with the same kind of vision. Vaccaro could, and would, for the next few decades.
Working freelance for Look, Vaccaro took portraits of Sophia Loren, President John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Enzo Ferrari, and Georgia O’Keeffe, among many others. As with his war photographs, Vaccaro’s portraits are present and of the moment. “He was absolutely charming. He was this suave, debonair Italian. He could talk his way into anything,” Monroe says. “There’s nothing between him and his subjects.” For Vaccaro, the people he photographed kept his mind off the atrocities of the war.
For almost four decades, Vaccaro worked as a freelance photographer all across the world. He traveled by camel up the Nile River and took a helicopter to the South Pole. Much of his war photography, though, remained unheralded until a 1998 exhibition laid the groundwork for a Taschen book called Entering Germany 1944-1949.
Six years ago, Vaccaro turned his negatives over his son Frank and daughter-in-law. All told, he documented the 20th century with more than a million negatives. “He kept everything in rolled-up paper in Kodak boxes,” Maria Vaccaro says. The family moved his studio to his apartment in Long Island City where they are working on the archives.
“When you’re a photographer, a serious photographer, you take chances, and you try to do the best you can,” Vaccaro says. “There was not another photographer better than me during the war.”
“I shot from anywhere. From a foxhole. Standing up. Lying down. From the top of the trees. I would climb trees and take pictures there.”
Monroe Gallery of Photography will be closed to visitors November 16 - November 30 under state mandated health orders. We are working remotely and are available online, via email and telephone.
Gallery operations will continue, with framing and shipping schedules unaffected.
"Tony Vaccaro at 98" is currently available for viewing on-line with a special short tribute video, please visit www.monroegallery.com
These procedures may change at any time based on updated guidance from the state. We appreciate your patience as we all navigate this difficult situation. We extend our concern and gratitude to our community, near and far.
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.
ART & PHOTOGRAPHY
IN PICTURES
November 2, 2020
The Stories Behind Five Iconic Presidential Campaign Photographs
Since its invention almost two centuries ago, photography has become both art and artifact, artifice and evidence, documenting the world in which we live. Granted access to the most exclusive of spaces, photojournalists play an extraordinary role in writing a first draft of history, recording it even as it unfolds. In bearing witness to historic events, their images have the power to shape and shift public opinion without uttering a single word, and while some may strive to be objective, such a task is arguably impossible.
The media plays an integral role in US presidential elections, from what it chooses to cover to how it frames the stories it tells. The new exhibition, The Campaign, curated by gallerists Sid and Michelle Monroe, explores how images inform our perception of candidates running for the highest office in the world. Featuring work by Bill Eppridge, Irving Haberman, Cornell Capa, Bill Ray, John Loengard, Alfred Eisenstaedt, and Neil Leifer, among others, The Campaign illustrates how the photography has become an inextricable part of the political narrative over the past 75 years.
“What struck us when we were curating the show is that the themes of restoration of the country, corruption of my opponent, aspiration for the young, civil inequities, working people’s inequities, these keep recycling almost as if all of these issues are a part of the American personality,” says Monroe. “Each campaign seems to decide and direct which part they are going to amplify.” Here, the Monroes offer an insight into the making of five iconic images of the US presidential race.
“Bill Eppridge was a sweetheart. His career spanned everything from Vietnam, Civil Rights, and sports, but he as fate as would have it was the photographer who captured Robert Kennedy’s assassination [on 6 June 1968] so he was on the campaign from the beginning to the bitter end.
“This image was an outtake. It was never published. Bill brought it to us and he wasn’t even sure who everybody was in the picture so we had this wonderful time reconstructing it because he didn’t have notes. RFK made a point of campaigning in a convertible in every town and city he went into. He was warned and he said. ‘If they want to get me, they’re going to get me.’
“Bill said that at night Bobby would travel with members of his family, put them to bed in the hotel, then come down and seek out journalists who had been in Vietnam because he wanted to know everything about what they had seen and what they thought. Bill said he struggled because it became very difficult to be not emotional and not to get connected to this campaign.”
“Grey Villet was a South African photographer who came to America. He was very quiet. He wasn’t as swashbuckling as a lot of the Life photographers were but he was extremely versatile. When you think about the versatility required in covering a presidential campaign, a riot, a rocket liftoff to space – the profession doesn’t get enough credit for what it requires of what we consider artists.
“In this era, every single one of these photographers was largely self-taught. For that versatility, they didn’t study to be specialised so when it came to an assignment this is where the innovation, artistry, athleticism, creativity would come in. Grey made this wonderful image that captures the aura of the Kennedy Mystique.
“We have this image of Kennedy commanding the campaign but the reality was the 1960 Democratic National Convention was highly contested between Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. The photograph shows Kennedy with his sisters in the background, other politicians with him, and women in these wonderful hats. He is bringing the full Kennedy Mystique into the convention to sway those delegates in a way that Johnson couldn’t. Johnson was much more gruff and brash and Kennedy was trying to put on a show.”
“In the 1960 presidential campaign, John F Kennedy’s platform was that we are now a ‘New America’. We’re a younger, more aspirational people and we’re going to have to come together. Nixon’s strategy was the Southern Strategy [which appealed to white supremacy to increase Republican turnout in the South, just as the Civil Rights Movement was reaching new heights and segregation was being dismantled]. Nixon wanted to divide and invoke the fear the racial equality will change our lives and traditions forever.
“This photograph was made just when Kennendy was telling his brother Robert that for strategic reasons he has agreed with his advisors to name [then Texas Senator] Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate. Hank Walker, working for Life magazine, said he took one photograph in that room and left immediately afterwards because of the tension. He stepped outside and shut the door. When the discussion was over, moments later, RFK came out and slammed his fist into his open palm, over and over again, saying, ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’”
“Joe Biden was a Democratic candidate for President in 1987. One of the factors that ended his campaign was the discovery of a life-threatening aneurysm. He was out of commission for some time. The photograph was taken upon his return, just outside his Senate office. Biden came back as a hero who could speak to both sides of the aisle.
“Joe McNally, who is a very down to earth New Yorker, will tell you what’s what. He walked away saying, ‘This is the real deal. Biden is a genuine nice guy. I saw how he was received, but also just how he spent time with me. It’s a cliche but he’s a regular Joe.’”
© Brooks Kraft: President Barack Obama campaigns in the rain, Glen Allen, Virginia, 2012 Courtesy of Monroe Gallery
“Brooks Kraft covered both Obama presidential campaigns; he also covered the White House for Time magazine. What’s remarkable is that this rally was cut short because it rained torrentially. The circumstance speaks volumes about Obama as a candidate and as a President: that he went head first into the campaign. It’s a very heroic pose. It’s very rock and roll.
“It also speaks to the fitness of a photographer not to be daunted by the rain, to stick it out, to be looking for something different. It’s a transcendent image and one of those moments any photographer would look back at and say, ‘I can’t believe I got that.’ You position yourself to be available something like this should something like this present itself.
“We hear this over and over again from journalists: they’re cold, they’re wet, they’re hungry, they’re pushed around, they’re abused, they’re spit on. It’s really a missionary kind of dedication. We feel so devoted to these photographers. It’s so vital to our democracy to tell these stories – and to tell them unimpeded, which has been increasingly tampered with. As Orwell said, ‘Much of what is important for us to see and read we are not meant to know.’”
The Campaign is on view online and at Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, through November 15, 2020.
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" I am almost 98 years of age and I walked to vote today. Please if I can do it, you can do it. We are all in this together America."- Tony Vaccaro Picture by Frank Vaccaro
"Tony Vaccaro at 98" will be on exhibit in the gallery and on-line at www.monroegallery.com November 20 - January 17, 2021. Drafted into WWII at age 21, 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. Nearing his 98th birthday, Tony is recovered from COVID-19, and is is one of the few people alive who can claim to have survived the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19.
This exhibition illustrates his will to live and advance the power of beauty in this life.
A new exhibition looks at how photography has been used to shape public image and garner public support for candidates campaigning for the most powerful office in the world.
Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Presidential Campaign, New Hampshire © Brooks Kraft / Monroe Gallery of Photography
“Politics is theater. It doesn't matter if you win. You make a statement. You say, ‘I'm here, pay attention to me,’” said Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California. Invariably photography, with its paradoxical ability to convey fact and fiction at the same time, has long played a major role in shaping political messages without ever saying a word.
The new exhibition, The Campaign, looks at how photographers have documented the race for the most powerful office in the world — that of the U.S. Presidency — over the past 80 years from the campaign trail to inauguration day. The exhibition, which features work by Cornell Capa, Bill Ray, John Leongard, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Neil Leifer, Brooks Kraft, and Nina Berman, among others, dates back to Thomas E. Dewey’s run in 1948, which resulted in one of the greatest upsets in election history.
Irving Haberman’s vibrant crowd scene shows just how influential the photograph was, as countless members of the crowd bear placards with Dewey’s confident visage gazing intently at us, emoting the perfect blend of assurance and artifice Americans have grown to know and love.
The Tragic Hero
Bobby Kennedy campaigns in Indiana during May of 1968, with various aides and friends: former prizefighter Tony Zale and (right of Kennedy) N.F.L. stars Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Deacon Jones © Bill Eppridge / Monroe Gallery of Photography
“Reporters listen, photographers look,” photographer Bill Eppridge said during the Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 tragic run, which ultimately resulted in his shocking death on the campaign trail before he could clinch the Democratic nomination. Kennedy, whose public profile was closely welded to his brother’s legacy, understood the language of visibility and representation long before they became buzzwords.
In Eppridge’s photograph of Kennedy campaigning in the Watts section of Los Angeles on the last day of the primary — just three years after riots against police brutality devastated the neighborhood — we see the former Attorney General symbolically standing on the shoulders of Black men, his wide smile standing in stark contrast to the cautious looks on their face. Eppridge’s image underscores the complex mixture of naïveté and hubris that privilege provides when confronting the rapacious specter of American violence.
The Power of Photography
This September, more than 73 million people tuned in to the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden — just the kind of ratings the President loves. As a failed businessman who rebranded his image through reality TV, Trump understands better than most the power image holds over the American public.
We focus our attention not on the action but on the TV monitor that beamed Kennedy’s radiant face into millions of American homes. The camera showed Kennedy as the picture of vitality an image that belied his actual health. Calm, cool, and collected, Kennedy soared while Nixon faltered — allowing the public to happily forgo the enduring wisdom of Edgar Allen Poe: “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
Richard Nixon giving a speech to the residents of Suffolk County, NY while on the campaign trail in 1968 © Irving Haberman / Monroe Gallery of Photography
By Miss Rosen
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer focusing on art, photography, and culture. Her work has been published in books, magazines, and websites including Time, Vogue, Artsy, Aperture, Dazed, and Vice, among others.
Through November 15, 2020
Monroe Gallery, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM 87501
https://www.monroegallery.com/
