Friday, July 12, 2024

Tony Vaccaro: War and Peace

 Via Pastiempo

July 12, 2024

color photograph of Peggey Guggenheim in a Gondola, Venice, Italy, 1968
Tony Vaccaro


Tony Vaccaro stuck around Europe for years following his discharge from the Army in September 1945, four months after D-Day. The timing allowed the famed photographer to capture both war’s brutality and its aftermath, the latter a time of both celebratory smiles and a welcome return to the mundanity of peacetime day-to-day existence.

Vaccaro’s war and post-war images contrast sharply with one another, and all contrast with his later work documenting daily life and fashion for major publications of his day such as Look, Newsweek, and Life. An array of his images is featured in Tony Vaccaro: The Pursuit of Beauty at the Monroe Gallery of Photography.

Owners Michelle and Sid Monroe were friendly with Vaccaro, who died eight days after his 100th birthday in December 2022. His son Frank spoke at a July 5 reception for the exhibition.

"We were privileged to know Tony and to be able to call him a friend. He shared his experiences, his empathy, his integrity and his passion for life and his family with us. He led his life, and pursued his work, as an antidote to mankind’s inhumanity to mankind. "


 — Brian Sandford




details:

Tony Vaccaro: The Pursuit of Beauty

Through September 15

Monroe Gallery of Photography

112 Don Gaspar Avenue

505-992-0800; monroegallery.com

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Travel + Leisure readers selected Santa Fe as the #2 U.S. destination; "a photographer's dream"

 Via Travel & Leisure

July 9, 2024


Travel + Leisure readers selected Santa Fe as the #2 U.S. destination on the 2024 World’s Best Awards’ list of the, “15 Best Cities in the U.S.” for the second consecutive year! 


"This artsy Southwestern destination has ranked high on our list for nearly 20 years, and it’s not just because of the 320 days of sunshine it receives each year, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. “Santa Fe is like its own country within a country,” gushed one reader. “It’s such a unique blend of culture and history that you don’t see in the rest of the USA.” Another visitor called its downtown, with Pueblo-style buildings and independent galleries, “a photographer's dream and a shopper's delight.”

Monday, July 8, 2024

AIPAD Announces Dates of New York Photography Show for 2025

 Via AIPAD



The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD) has announced its dates for next year's show, which will be returning to the Park Avenue Armory once again after this year's successful venture at this location.

The fair will be opening on Wednesday afternoon, April 23rd, and closing on Sunday evening, April 27th, 2025.

Visit Monroe Gallery of Photography's exhibit at the 2024 edition here.

Sunday, July 7, 2024

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF TONY VACCARO

 Via Kevin Sessums Sums It Up

July 6, 2024



"I first discovered the extraordinary photographs of Tony Vaccaro a few years ago - and met the man himself - when I was in Santa Fe and Ali MacGraw, one of his subjects, took me to an exhibition of his work at the Monroe Gallery of Photography. I was both impressed by his fashion and celebrity photographs and moved by his WWII ones. I think he was unique in his bestriding both worlds with such grit and grace. There was a kind of wry bemusement to the fashion and celebrity ones but a wrenching intimacy to the war work. Last night the latest show of his photography opened at the Monroe Galley. I felt Tony’s presence in my conversation with his ten-year-old grandson Luke who was there with his family. The show runs until September 15th. If you are in Santa Fe, don’t miss it."

 --more here


Friday, July 5, 2024

Tony Vaccaro: The Pursuit of Beauty

 Via Musee Magazine

July 5, 2024


screenshot of Musee Magazine webpage with photograph of a woman wearing an architectural hat resembling the Guggenheim Museum in front of the museum building in 1960



Tony Vaccaro died on December 28, 2022, eight days after celebrating his 100th birthday. Orphaned at age 6, as a young boy he immersed himself in studying classic European art and by age 10 had a box camera. He photographed WWII from a soldier’s perspective, documenting his personal witness to the brutality of war. After carrying a camera across battlefields, he become one the most sought-after photographers of his day, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Flair, Look, Life, Venture, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Quick, Newsweek, and many more. Vaccaro turned the trauma of his youth into a career seeking beauty. Tony’s transition from war and its aftermath was a deliberate one as an antidote to man’s inhumanity to man.



more here: Monroe Gallery

Friday, June 28, 2024

"Fallout', directed by Nina Berman, is the Telly Awards Silver Winner for Documentary: Short Form

 Via The Telly Awards

June 28, 2024


SILVER WINNER: DOCUMENTARY: SHORT FORM (UNDER 40 MINUTES) — NON-BROADCAST

Executive Producer

Jeffery DelViscio, Scientific American

Director

Duy Linh Tu, Scientific American

Director

Nina Berman, Scientific American

Producer/Editor

Sebastian Tuinder, Scientific American

Animator

Dominic Smith, Scientific American

Narrator

Joseph Polidoro, Scientific American


Saturday, June 22, 2024

Save The Date: July 6, Free screening of Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro

black and white photograph of Tony Vaccaro  holding his camera whle seated on an airplane wing during WWII

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce a major exhibition of more than 45 photographs celebrating the life and career of Tony Vaccaro. “Tony Vaccaro: The Pursuit of Beauty” The exhibit opens on Friday, July 5, with a public reception and Gallery conversation with Frank Vaccaro, son of the photographer, 5 – 7 pm.  

Monroe Gallery will sponsor a free screening of the HBO Documentary Film “Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc Tony Vaccaro” on Saturday, July 6, 4 pm at the Jean Cocteau Theater. 

Free tickets here.

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.

 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.

 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, the film includes interviews with a number of other people, including Tyler Hicks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer for the New York Times; Lynsey Addario, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who has covered conflict for 30 years for the New York Times, Time, National Geographic, and other major publications; 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.

 Concurrently, Monroe Gallery is featuring a major exhibition of photographs by Tony Vaccaro. The exhibit continues through September 15, 2024.

 

Tony Vaccaro died on December 28, 2022, eight days after celebrating his 100th birthday. Orphaned at age 6, he immersed himself in studying classic European art and by age 10 had a box camera. He photographed WWII from a soldier’s perspective, documenting his personal witness to the brutality of war.  After carrying a camera across battlefields, he become one the most sought-after photographers of his day, eventually working for virtually every major publication: Flair, Look, Life, Venture, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, Quick, Newsweek, and many more. Vaccaro turned the trauma of his youth into a career seeking beauty. This exhibit explores the extraordinary depth of his archive and features several new discoveries being exhibited for the very first time.