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Expressions of Faith:
Racioppo’s Photography at IAM |
Elizabeth Primamore
When you first view photographer Larry Racioppo’s images, you
think you are visiting a remote village in Italy. The photos
show elaborate gold-dripped shrines adorned with colorful
figurines of Jesus and Mary, a winding path lined with statues
of angels leading to a stone chapel, or a shell decorated cross
resting inside a blue-tinged grotto next to miracle water. But
if you look closely at the captions—Lisanti Family Chapel,
Bronx; Abate Family Yard Shrine, Williamsburg; the Joseph Pezza
Shed at St. Anslem’s RC Church, Brooklyn—you realize that these
religious sites are located right here in New York.
The exhibit, titled “Architecture of Devotion: Italian American
Religious Expression in New York City,” curated by Dr. Joseph
Sciorra, is on display at the Italian American Museum from April
25th through May 20th with a reception on Wednesday, May 4th
(RSVP 212-642-2020). The show consists of fourteen huge
photographs (20” x 24” to 30” x 40”) of personal shrines, sites,
and structures of Catholic iconography, rituals, and feasts
built in various New York City neighborhoods. It is a walking
tour through a sacred past, one that lives in the hearts and
minds of generations of Italian Americans today.
“I’m interested in the way people express their faith by
building things, “ says Racioppo, a Brooklyn native, born in
1947, who has taken photographs throughout the city since 1971.
“I think it’s an Italian American thing to want to build.”
The exhibit offers a selected collection of images in vivid
color that capture such sites as the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel
Grotto, built in 1937 by Italian immigrant men in Rosebank,
Staten Island, and lists on the National and New York State of
Registers of Historic Places.
The exhibit also includes photographs of the Giglio Feast, which
began in 1903 in Williamsburg by immigrants from Nola. It
consists of 125 men who lift a multi-storied, tapering tower
known as a giglio (lily in English) and a boat structure. Once
in the air the men carry the structures throughout neighborhood
streets.
Located in the parking lot of a Brooklyn church is the Joseph
Pezza shed. Racioppo’s photographs show a 16 sq. ft. shed
decorated inside and out with religious imagery: toys, flags and
photos by long time attendant Joseph Pezza.
With questions of faith and religious feeling shaped by
Racioppo’s Italian American Catholic background, he is drawn to
these creations on subconscious and visceral levels. They bring
him back to his childhood in the 1950s when he would visit his
grandmother who had a big altar with saints and candles in her
bedroom.
Racioppo’s larger- than-life holy renderings of rosary beads,
angels, and statues of saints look both ancient and new. They
are an experience—like an epiphany.
After stumbling upon the religious site of the Abate family
located in Williamsburg, Racioppo knew he had to find similar
sites and photograph them. The Abate family shrine was built by
the father of the current owner, eighty-year-old Vincent Abate,
in gratitude for coming home safely from World War II. It is a
large stone grotto with a statue of the Blessed Mother. To this
day people bring flowers and light candles. “I saw that and
thought it was very moving,” says Racioppo.
When he is not discovering these “amazing little pockets of
things around the city,” he works as a staff photographer for
New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and
Development. According folklorist Joseph Sciorra, Racioppo is
interested in “how people change the urban environment.”
Racioppo, who holds a graduate degree from Brooklyn College, is
deeply connected to his working class roots, which has greatly
influenced his perspective on art. “My father is a retired long
shore man,” he says, “I believe that art should be accessible to
all people.”
The Italian American Museum, which is in transitional residence
at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and is
affiliated with the City University of New York, is located at
28 West 44th Street, 17th floor, Manhattan. The Museum is
dedicated to exploring the rich cultural heritage of Italy and
Italian Americans and its influence on contemporary culture. |
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