By Danielle Winterton
In early April 1960, Vaccaro traveled to Abiquiu, N.M., on assignment from Look Magazine to photograph American women painters for a feature story. Vaccaro arrived at the home of Georgia O'Keeffe only to be ignored by her for the first several days of his visit.O'Keeffe had wanted Ansel Adams, Todd Webb or Richard Avedon to do her portrait, Vaccaro said, “and, of course, I was not one of these three people.” But he was already a highly accomplished and celebrated photographer: Over the course of his career as a photojournalist, his work appeared in Time, Life, Flair and Venture magazines and he shot the likes of Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso and Monoleto, the greatest bullfighter in the history of Spain. But it wasn't until the subject of dinner came up that O'Keeffe turned her attention toward Vaccaro long enough to hear about his credentials.O'Keeffe's maid was taking the weekend off and Vaccaro offered to cook her dinner, he said. This finally won O'Keeffe's favor and “from then on,” he said, “she turned toward me and I remained with her for a week to take 10 to 15 rolls in black and white and color.” Only two of these photographs have ever been exhibited to the public, until now.The portraits themselves show O'Keeffe in her home, on her ranch and in the desert. It is this very personal setting and private mood that makes the portraits unique.Vaccaro lived on Central Park West and in Little Neck before settling in Hunters Point in 1985. He is perhaps best known for the famous photograph he took of a World War II GI on his knee, kissing a little girl in St. Briac. In 1943 he was recruited into the war; he brought along an Argus C-3 camera and proceeded to shoot more than 7,000 images, which would eventually land him a free-lance position at Flair.”When I see (Tony's) work, whether we're talking about war photos or magazine photos, there's a human element that jumps out at you,” said Kenny Greenberg, a co-founder of Art-O-Mat L.I.C. “I have enjoyed watching him take photos – there's something profound about it. He looks, picks up his camera, and captures with a sense of timing that's hard to describe. You have to see it to understand it.”This will be the third gallery show at Art-O-Mat L.I.C., which opened in November 2005 and aims to pull together, display and sell a wide variety of works by L.I.C. artists.”We used to see Tony walking around the neighborhood with his dog,” Greenberg said, “and you can't help but see an interesting character. One evening we were invited to watch four or five carousels of slides with war photos and magazine photography. When we opened Art-O-Mat, he offered to give us photos and it just evolved from there. It is quite amazing and we really feel very lucky. This was sort of what we imagined in our dreams – that Art-O-Mat would start connecting interesting people in the neighborhood and bring out the talent of the people that are here, but we had no idea the overwhelming talent we'd end up discovering.”The show will run till March 5 at Art-O-Mat and Vaccaro was present at the opening reception on Jan. 26, where he spoke briefly and introduced his subject: “Forty years later, she is here,” he said, referring to O'Keeffe.Photographs of her and others by Vaccaro are also being exhibited in other popular L.I.C. establishments: Particularly, Vaccaro's portraits of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning can be seen at Tuk Tuk Thai Restaurant, at 49-06 Vernon Blvd., and a large-scale color O'Keeffe hangs at Serendipitea, across the street from Art-O-Mat.Art-O-Mat is located at 46-46 Vernon Blvd. at the northwest corner 47th Road and Vernon Boulevard. For more information visit www.licweb.com/artomat.
