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In celebration of Women’s Month 2008, an exhibition of over forty original vintage photographs of famous women entitled “Creative Women” (subtitle “Luminous Beauty”) by noted photojournalist and celebrity photographer Anthony Vaccaro, who lived and worked in New Rochelle will be presented by the New Rochelle Council on The Arts. The show will run March 3rd through 31st at Lumen Winter Gallery in the lobby of The New Rochelle Library, 1 Library Plaza in New Rochelle. A reception to meet Vaccaro will be held on Sunday, March 9th from 5:00 to 7:00 pm, to which the public is cordially invited.
Tony Vaccaro first became involved in photography while attending New Rochelle High School in Westchester county NY, and became early on best known for his photos taken in Europe during 1944 and 1945 and in Germany immediately after World War II. After the war, he became a renowned fashion and lifestyle photographer for U.S. magazines, including Life, Look, Travel & Leisure, Readers Digest, Signature and Flair and many international publications as well. Photographs from his extensive wartime archive were published in 2001 in his Taschein book Entering Germany: Photographs 1944-1949. In 1994, he was awarded the French Légion d'honneur at the celebrations of the fifty-year anniversary of the Invasion of Normandy. Vaccaro is also a recipient of the Art Director’s Gold Medal and The World Press Photo Gold Medal in 1963 and 1969 respectively. He has also taught photography at Syracuse University, Cooper Union and The Germaine School of Photography.
Vaccaro has had a number of exhibitions in New Rochelle of his photojournalistic works taken during the war, but this is his first one-man show in Westchester of portraits of famous women, including such notables as Eleanor Roosevelt, Grace Kelly, Maria Callas, Georgia O’Keeffe and dozens more in the arts, politics, sciences and literature whom he came to know well over his years of portrait work for magazines and other publications. Vacarro’s next exhibition in April 2008 will be one that has been commissioned by the mayor of Rome, Italy; that will include his largest exhibition to date, with over 525 of his pictures.
The late famous New Rochelle photojournalist and fellow celebrity photographer Arthur Rothstein described Vaccaro’s portrait work for a 1982 New York show:
“As a photojournalist for four decades, Tony Vaccaro has been required to subordinate his personal interests and expressive urges to the demands of editors, art directors and publications. His photographs are not art for art's sake, but on a higher plane and more difficult to accomplish, they are images that are capable of attracting attention, well-composed, technically superb, informative and stimulating.
“A photojournalist such as Tony Vaccaro, must approach his subject, recognize those significant objects in the environment, capture the exact moment and expression, understand the body language and emphasize the character of the individual. It is a deceptively effortless and most rigorous discipline that Vaccaro has practiced. His creativity is evident from these photographs that reveal the unique personalities of creative people. With his portraits, Tony Vaccaro is teaching us and we are learning about his subjects and their environment. His photographs deserve careful study.
“No longer related to their original journalistic purpose, they are now sensitive graphic statements and a tribute to Vaccaro's exceptional talent.”
Information on days and hours that the library will be open for viewing the exhibition is available by calling the New Rochelle Library at 914-632-7878
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