An interesting name for sure, but he was an even more interesting artist. A native of Chicago, Iannelli began as an industrial photographer before switching to photojournalism in 1940. By the end of the decade, he was known as the highest paid shooter in New York, with photos extensively featured in such publications as Life, Fortune, Colliers and The Saturday Evening Post. A master of difficult lighting situations, his October 1950 cover for McCalls was the first to be originated on 35mm color film. In addition to popularizing the use of soft light and hand-held cameras and strobes on location, he produced and directed many documentaries and pioneered a number of important innovations for stills and movie equipment. For reasons I can’t understand, he has fallen from collective memory, but his career thrived well into the 1980’s, and that’s reason enough to rescue him from obscurity.
I recently discovered Iannelli by accident while researching an unrelated topic. While his work in periodicals is fascinating, I was most impressed by a series he executed during World War Two as part of Edward Steichen’s Naval Aviation Photographic Unit. Tasked with documenting the emotions of the sailors on several ships in the South Pacific, his detached, fly-on-the-wall approach allowed him to capture unguarded, intimate moments that were generally ignored or overlooked by every other photographer of the conflict. By concentrating on the micro rather than the macro, Iannelli reminds us that there’s more to war than violence, misery and death. Though they show only a small number of the approximately sixteen-million men and women in uniform at the time, each face is representative of the whole and implies a unique story that existed outside the frame.
To his credit, this portfolio was featured in a 1945 collection edited by Steichen entitled, U.S. Navy War Photographs: Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Harbor; they were also included in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1945 exhibition, Power in the Pacific: Battle Photographs of Our Navy in Action on the Sea and in the Sky.
Of interesting note, Iannelli’s father – Alfonso, Sr. – was a noted sculptor, painter, product designer and associate of Frank Lloyd Wright. I’ve included just a small sample of his son’s output. Search him out online for a broader selection.
And while you’re doing so, have a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Thanks for alerting us to this photographer. As a wee thing, I watched “Victory at Sea” on NBC and I believe that was the beginning of my interest in all facets of photography. I found Victory recently and enjoyed watching70 years later. The score magnificently compliments the pictures.
Greg – I remember Victory at Sea as well from when I was a kid and also rediscovered it recently. It is truly an amazing compilation…