Reframing Italian America

May 28th, 2015 – January 8th, 2016: Reframing Italian America

Reframing Italian America brings to light forty-one historical photographs from the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute’s Bernard Titowsky Collection. The vast majority of the 222 items in this assemblage depict scenes of Italian immigrant life throughout the United States from approximately the first three decades of the twentieth century. A significant number of these prints are mounted on now-faded gray paperboard and captioned with meticulous and ornate calligraphy, presumably part of a previous exhibition. Rosangela Briscese and Joseph Sciorra have selected images from the collection to mount an exhibit of otherwise unknown photographs. The reframing of these images is an opportunity to discover, interpret, and enjoy these fragile and obscure visual documents. These portraits of long-gone individuals, many of them anonymous to history, offer a glimpse of how Italian immigrants refashioned themselves in the process of transforming America.

The catalog features essays by Dominique Padurano, Joseph Sciorra, and John Turturro.