Carmel Vitullo (born July 16, 1925) is an American street photographer whose imagery of Rhode Island have been acquired for a number of collections.[1]
Carmel Vitullo was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on July 16, 1925, into the small Italian community of Federal Hill. After high school Vitullo enrolled in a major in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), but abandoned it for the medium of photography about which she was more passionate. In further study at the New York Institute of Photography[2] she discovered the work of Henri Cartier Bresson and she continued to be an exponent and practitioner of street photography.[3] A majority of her photographs depict the neighbourhood of Rhode Island in the 1950s and the first Newport Jazz Festival. She ran a studio in a South Water Street warehouse in the 1960s.[4] Her commercial practice was in portrait[5] and industrial photography and in her sixties after her retirement, and while living in North Providence, she was working as a producer in cable television.[6]
Recognition
In the 1950s Vitullo approached Edward Steichen with her portfolio. He selected her photograph of displacedrefugees at Grand Central Terminal en route to a relocation centre, for the Museum of Modern Art world-touring exhibition The Family of Man, which was seen by 9 million visitors. Her print was exhibited in the section ‘Rebels’ at the end of a row of six, hard against the adjoining wall,[7][8] in sympathy with the entrapment of the subjects who are seated, frieze-like, along a bench parallel to the picture plane. Stacked on a cart in front of them are their suitcases labeled with stickers of the NCWC (National Catholic Welfare Conference), the social Catholic organization helping immigrants relocate to the United States[9] and confirming their identity as immigrants. Disquieting, confusing spots of light from the skylight fall across the scene and add to the pervasive anxiety evident in the expressions of the men, women, and children. The inclusion in The Family of Man and its accompanying catalogue[10] (which has never been out of print) came as a breakthrough for Vitullo. Since then she has exhibited alongside Harry Callahan, O. Winston Link and others and her work has been collected by major institutions.
2006, 1 December–25 February: Urban America, 1930–1970, RISD Museum of Art[14]
2009, June–August: Block Island Historical Society[4]
2009, 14 July–28 August: Documenting a Moment, a Place, an Era - Photographs by O. Winston Link (Louisiana 1937-1941) and Carmel Vitullo (Rhode Island 1950 - 1960), Bert Gallery, 540 South Water St., Providence[15][16]
2011, 28 September – 12 November: The Artist's Venice, paintings by Americans Mabel Woodward, Henry Kenyon, Gordon Peers and others, with street photographs by Carmel Vitullo, Bert Gallery, Rhode Island[17]
2017, 24 May - 30 June: Oakland Beach in the 1960′s: Art, Society, and Nature, Warwick Center for the Arts, 3259 Post Rd., Warwick[19]
2019, 4 May–18 July: The Providence Album, Vol 1, Carmel Vitullo and Harry Callahan, Carriage House Gallery, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, 357 Benefit Street, Providence[20]
↑ Advertisement, Bristol Phoenix, (Rhode Island), November 21, 1969
↑ "Local programming gies a shot at fame", North Adams Transcript (North Adams, Massachusetts) Saturday, 14 Dec 1991, p.5
↑ Hurm, Gerd, 1958-, (editor.); Reitz, Anke, (editor.); Zamir, Shamoon, (editor.) (2018), The family of man revisited: photography in a global age, London I.B.Tauris, ISBN978-1-78672-297-3, 133-156
↑ Madeline Ferretti-Theilig/ Jochen Krautz, 'Speaking Images of Humanity. »The Family of Man«Exhibition as an Exemplary Model of Relational Aesthetic and Pictorial Practice' in IMAGE, Ausgabe 26, 07/2017,p.20
↑ Petit, Jeanne: Our Immigrants Coreligionist. The National Catholic Welfare Conference as an Advocate for Immigrants in the 1920s. In: Buff, Rachel Ida (ed.): Immigrant Rights in the Shadows of Citizenship. New York [NYU P] 2008, cited in Madeline Ferretti-Theilig/ Jochen Krautz, 'Speaking Images of Humanity. »The Family of Man«Exhibition as an Exemplary Model of Relational Aesthetic and Pictorial Practice' in IMAGE, Ausgabe 26, 07/2017
↑ Steichen, Edward; Steichen, Edward, 1879-1973, (organizer.); Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967, (writer of foreword.); Norman, Dorothy, 1905-1997, (writer of added text.); Lionni, Leo, 1910-1999, (book designer.); Mason, Jerry, (editor.); Stoller, Ezra, (photographer.); Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1955). The family of man: the photographic exhibition. Published for the Museum of Modern Art by Simon and Schuster in collaboration with the Maco Magazine Corporation.{{cite book}}: |author6= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
↑ Hurm, Gerd; Reitz, Anke; Zamir, Shamoon (18 December 2017). The family of man revisited: photography in a global age. London. ISBN978-1-78672-297-3. OCLC1018942141.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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