Pvt. Michael A. Vaccaro

Biography and military service

Michael A. Vaccaro, better know as Tony Vaccaro, is an American photographer who is best known for his photos taken in Europe during 1944 and 1945 and in Germany immediately after World War II. After the war, he became a renowned fashion and lifestyle photographer for U.S. magazines.

Michael A. "Tony" Vaccaro is born on December 20, 1922 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania as the second child of three (and the only boy) of his parents, who were Italian immigrants, he was baptized Michelantonio Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro. His father Giuseppe Antonio Vaccaro was from Bonefro in the region of Molise in Italy. In 1926, when he was 3 years old, the family moved back to Bonefro in Italy, where Tony spent his youth, but both his father and mother died, separately, a few years later. His sisters were taken to an Italian orphanage, and Tony lived with an uncle and aunt.

With the outbreak of World War II, Tony Vaccaro moved back to the United States in order to escape the Fascist regime and the military service in Italy. Tony and his sisters returned to America just before war broke out in Europe and lived together in New Rochelle, New York where he attended Isaac E. Young High School before going to war. As a high school student Tony became intrigued by photography. The seventeen-years old Vaccaro finished his education at the high school and two months later, on August 16, 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Europe in 1944. Tony Vaccaro fought in 1944 and 1945 as a private in the 83rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army in Normandy and then in Germany. His task as a scout left him with enough free time during the day to shoot photos. By the end of the war in Europe, Tony Vaccaro had become an official photographer for the division’s newspaper. In September 1945, he was discharged from the army.

Vaccaro stayed in Germany, where he got a job first as a photographer for the U.S. authorities stationed at Frankfurt, and then with Weekend, the Sunday supplement of the U.S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes. Until 1949, Vaccaro photographed throughout Germany and Europe, documenting post-war life. Photographs from his extensive wartime archive were published in his books: 'Shots of War' and 'Entering Germany 1944-1949'.

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Tony returned to the United States in 1949 and worked exclusively as a photographer. His works can be seen in a variety of galleries and publications to include Life magazine. In 1994, he was awarded the French Légion d’honneur at the celebrations of the fifty-year anniversary of the Invasion in Normandy. In 2016 HBO produced a biography 'Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc Tony Vaccaro' which highlighted many of his iconic World War Two photographs.

Tony Vaccaro died at 100 on December 28, 2022 at his home in the Long Island City section of Queens, New York.

Gallery

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