After a lifetime behind the camera, Tony Vaccaro is still going strong. After recovering from COVID-19 earlier this year, the Italian-American photographer, who turns 98 on December 20, has resumed his workout routine. On an unseasonably warm late November morning, he ran a 12:54 mile; not bad for the high school athlete who shaved 42 seconds off the record in 1943. “I plan at 100 to establish a new record for running a mile,” Vaccaro says from his home in Long Island City, Queens.
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It’s more than a notion; Vaccaro is a survivor par excellence. Born Michelantonio Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro in Greensburg Pennsylvania, in 1922, Vaccaro was just four years old when both his parents died while the family was relocating to Italy. The horrors of his childhood linger to this day, as the photographer recounts the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father’s brother while growing up in Italy.
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“My uncle and his wife never had children and they didn’t know how handle them,” Vaccaro says. “Because of this, I was punished every day. I was black and blue for 15 years of my life, until I got in the Army. They looked and asked, ‘What happened to you, son?’ I couldn’t tell the truth, that people were beating me for everything I did wrong.”
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Though the bruises have healed, the memories remain tempered by a love his discovered as a teen. After World War II broke out in Europe, Vaccaro fled to the United States, and enrolled in Isaac E. Young High School in New Rochelle, New York. The young artist dreamed of being a sculptor but fate had other plans.
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“Mr. Louis, a teacher, told me, ‘Tony, these sculptures are pretty good but you are born to be a photographer.’ I had never heard the word photography before,” Vaccaro says. “He told me, ‘You will make a great life with it,’ and by God he was right. I was then 14, 15. I’ve been a photographer for 85 years and I still feel very good.”
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