Reframing Italian America: Historical Photographs and Immigrant Representations

Reframing Italian America brings to light forty-one historical photographs from the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute’s Bernard Titowsky Collection, and it features essays by Dominique Padurano, Joseph Sciorra, and John Turturro. The majority of the 222 items in the Titowsky Collection depict scenes of Italian immigrant life throughout the United States from the first three decades of the twentieth century. A significant number are mounted on now-faded gray paperboard and captioned with ornate calligraphy, presumably part of a previous exhibition. The reframing of these images is an opportunity to discover these obscure visual documents and observe how Italian immigrants refashioned themselves in the process of transforming America.