Background

Ethnicity: Tony Vaccaro's parents immigrated to the United States from Italy.

Tony Vaccaro was born on December 20, 1922, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the second child of Giuseppe Antonio Vaccaro. Tony had two sisters.

Education

Tony Vaccaro spent his early years traveling between the homeland of his parents, Italy, and his native United States. In 1925, Tony’s parents died. His two sisters were placed in an orphanage, and Tony was sent to the family of his uncle. The latter forced his nephew to work on a farm. In 1939, he flew from physical abuse to the United States.

Vaccaro studied at Isaac E. Young High School in New Rochelle, New York where he received a diploma in 1943. While at school, Vaccaro developed an interest in sculpture but his teacher of Chemistry encouraged him to buy his first camera instead, an Argus C-3. The early shoots Vaccaro made with it were full of quirkiness, technical innovation, and sincerity, the traits that would be an integral part of his following works.

Career

The start of Tony Vaccaro’s career can be counted from the military service in the United States Army which he joined in April 1944 as a front line infantryman of the 83rd Infantry Division. Fighting with the Platoon from Normandy to Berlin, he chronicled everyday stuff of the conflict, like food preparation, mail delivery, and fierce fighting. Many of the photos that he took during the service became the core part of the images documenting the full range of war horrors, including iconic ‘Kiss of Liberation’, ‘Last Step of Jack Rose’, and ‘Death in the Snow’.

After the discharge from the army in September 1945, Vaccaro stayed in Germany. First, he was invited as a photographer by the United States authorities at Frankfurt. For some period of time, he traveled around the country and abroad with a camera to see how people resume their usual life. In 1948, Vaccaro joined the staff of Weekend in Paris, the Sunday supplement of the United States Army newspaper Stars and Stripes. A year later, Tony came back to New York City.

Upon his return to the United States, Vaccaro first freelanced for Flair, Look, Venture, Harper’s Bazaar, Quick, Newsweek, and others. Soon, he became a staff photographer at Life magazine. From the middle of the 1950s to the end of the 1960s he shared his time between New York City and Rome. It was during this time when he tried himself as a celebrity and fashion photographer for the first time. In 1964, he traveled to Finland to produce a photo story commissioned by Helsinki’s Marimekko fashion house.

Six years later, Vaccaro occupied the post of an educator at Cooper Union where he taught photography for ten subsequent years. In 1979, he settled down in Long Island.

Since the beginning of the new decade, Vaccaro has taken part in more than 250 solo and group exhibitions. In 2014, the photographer established Tony Vaccaro Museum in Bonefro, Italy, and a year later opened his own photo studio in New York City where he continues to work on new photos nowadays.

The photos from his wartime archive were gathered in his books ‘Entering Germany: Photographs 1944-1949’ and ‘Shots of War’.

Achievements

• 

  Tony Vaccaro is considered as one of the most distinguished photographers who made a significant contribution to the preservation of the wartime heritage.
  
  Although about four hundred photos from the total number of eight he made during the conflict were destroyed in an accident in 1947, the survived images continue to help new generations to understand better all the horror of those times and to capture the feelings of people who went through it.
  
  Tony Vaccaro has masterly reflected the atmosphere of the peace-time as well. Lots of well-known personalities, from kings to cinema stars were among his models in the post-war period, including Giovanni XXIII, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, The Eisenhower Family, Enzo Ferrari, Greta Garbo, Pablo Picasso, Federico Fellini, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’ Keeffe, Maria Callas, and others.
  
  Many of the methods and techniques that Vaccaro developed during his career are currently appropriated as standard for today's photographers.
  
  Vaccaro has been a recipient of numerous awards, including the Art Director’s Gold Medal, the World Press Photo Gold Medal, the Legion of Honor, the Medal of Honor, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Minerva d’Oro to name a few. In 1994, he was named the Knight of the Legion of Honour, the Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres the following year, and the Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2004.
  
  Tony Vaccaro has been featured in ten books and two major films including the recent one, a 2016 ‘Underfire’ by HBO.
  
  Vaccaro’s heritage is acquired by many major art collections, both public and private, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Library of Congress, Washington D. C.
  
  In 2004, ‘Penn Station’ by Vaccaro was purchased for $1,495 USD at Swann Auction Galleries.

Works

More photos

• photography

  • Defeated Soldier

  • Kiss of Liberation

  • Old Man, Bonefro, Italy

  • The Violinist

  • Packed Train

  • Coney Island, New York

  • Fellini on the set of "La Dolce Vita"

  • Givenchy by the Pool, South of Paris

  • Extra on the set of "8 1/2"

  • After Degas, Woan and Flowers

  • The Veil, for LOOK

  • Gwen Verdon, New York City

  • Sophie Loren

  • Georgia O'Keeffe with Cheese

  • "Tired Eyes"

  • Newly Liberated Women in Nante

  • American GI Ivan Parrott is seen running through smoke in no man’s land near Neuss

  • Woman back from the fields, Germany

  • Guggenheim Hat

  • Dovima

Views

Quotations: "You have to make the world a better place. If you’re not trying as best as you can, what’s the reason for living?"

"What is photography? Nothing special, just a little click, why worry about it?"

"In my photos what I want to see is dignity. In my photos man is king."

"I was born with this idea in my head that every photograph has an order. I have always believed in this."

Personality

Tony Vaccaro likes to spend time with his grandchildren and to cook spaghetti.

He was described by the BBC as "Greatest combat photographer of WWII".

Quotes from others about the person

• "Fantastic photojournalist, fashion photographer, general photographer, with exquisite taste and great technical ability. Tony’s specialty is versatility." Arthur Rothstein, picture editor
  
  "Tony Vaccaro is widely regarded as having generated the greatest single collection of WWII photographs by any one person." Saving Fela documentary Producers

Connections

Tony Vaccaro was married to a former Marimekko fashion house model Anja Lehto till 1979. The family produced two sons named Francis and David.

Father:

Giuseppe Antonio Vaccaro

ex-wife:

Anja Lehto

Son:

Francis Vaccaro

Son:

David Vaccaro

Friend:

Alberto Burri

Friend:

Sophia Loren

Friend:

Marcello Mastroianni

References

• Tony Vaccaro: The Formative Years
  2006
• Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro The documentary 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.
  2016