″[…] I don’t see a future for Italy, but for the Italians I see a brilliant one.″ (Indro Montanelli)
ITALIANY is a visual celebration of Italians working, living and loving in New York City, manifested through a series of iconic black-and-white portraits, taken in a variety of places around the city. The exhibition is a window into the excellence of Italians in New York. The impact of Italians living in America should not be understated, as so many Italians have contributed impressively to every facet of life in America, evident in culture, science, arts, fashion, politics, cuisine and medicine.
ITALIANY is the first initiative of Peroni Nastro Azzurro’s two-year campaign launching this month that celebrates Italian heritage and style.
″Italians in New York, Italians and New York—this is the way I have presented my vision of Italians in America. We all have individual reasons to be proud of our identity, thus each portrait is a collaboration, rather than just a simple photograph. Each portrait was a project in which I worked with every individual as part of a process to capture the essence oftheir experience as an Italian by understanding how they present themselves″ Wandael explains.
Wandael, like many other Italians living in America, will always call Italy his home. Wandael was born and raised in Bolzano, Italy and studied photography and architecture at the University of Ferrara. After practicing both in Berlin and Los Angeles, he decided to exclusively follow his true passion of photography.
Wandael’s genuine love for portraiture, his knowledge of art, architecture and understanding of style has made him a distinguished figure in the industry. His work has appeared in magazines such as VogueItalia, Uomo Vogue, Russian Vogue, Russian Elle, Amica, The Observer and The Telegraph. Wandael’s work is known globally; he has had exhibitions in Europe and all across the United States, including a permanent collection at the FIT Museum in New York. In 2012, Wandael was in Afghanistan for a reportage covering the conditions of female jails and the military training of Afghanwomen. In 2013, he completed a 5900-mile coast-to-coast journey on his motorcycle to create a book of photographs that captured the spirit of America through his eyes: Dear America from NY to SF.
Wandael, curator and photographer, expressed his deep passion for ITALIANY: ″The project is a tribute to all those Italians who left their families, their comforts, their mamma, their casa and their pasta. ITALIANY honors the courage, sacrifice, and achievements of so many Italians in America through my modest contribution of these portraits. ITALIANY is a deserved tribute to my beautiful country that forged such incredibly talented individuals″.
The exhibition will be on display until September 26th at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. Thereafter, ITALIANY will be presented in Miami and Los Angeles, where Wandael will add new profiles of Italians in those respective cities. The ITALIANY project will be travelingaround the world as metaphor of the Italian courage to leave Italy in search of a personal dream and will be completed with a book entitled ″Italiany.us″, a collection of all ITALIANY portraits.
ALEXO WANDAEL ITALIANY
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, NYU
24 West 12th Street
New York, NY 10011
Sept. 4 – 26, 2014
Opening Private Event: Wednesday Sept. 3, 2014, 6pm-8pm
On display through Sept. 26
Monday - Friday 10am - 5pm (on nights of events, until end time of event)
For more information visit ITALIANY official sites:
Facebook: /ItalianyUS
Twitter: @ItalianyUS
Instagram: @ItalianyUS
#ItalianyUS #Wandael #StorieItaliane
