Sofia Loren, 1967 – Copyright Santi Visalli
Santi Visalli Biography
“I’m a positivist.
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For more than 40 years, award-winning photographer Santi Visalli traveled the globe for leading magazines, newspapers, and book publishers. A master craftsman, he has been acclaimed for the range, precision, and poetry of his work.
Santi Visalli is a prolific photojournalist who covered the news from social issues to politics to lifestyles to entertainment and photographed five presidents of the United States: Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton. He also worked on films with such directors as Federico Fellini, Lina Wertmuller, and Peter Yates and has photographed numerous personalities. Visalli’s photos appeared in and on the covers of some 50 magazines and newspapers worldwide, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, Life, U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, American Heritage, Paris Match, Stern, Oggi, Epoca, and L”Europeo. Expanding to a more permanent form of photojournalistic expression—coffee table books—Visalli created 14 full-color cityscapes published by Rizzoli: Chicago (1987, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007), Boston (1988), San Francisco (1990, 2002), Los Angeles (1992), Miami (1993), New York (1994), Washington, D.C. (1995), and Las Vegas (1996). Each runs more than 200 pages and took him a year or more to shoot. In 2009, in Italy, Vianello published his book Icons, a collection of b&w photos of important people of the 1960s through the 1990s. In 2018 MOXI—The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation published Visalli’s book: The Making of Moxi. His photographs are in many private collections, and five are in the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. His photography has also been exhibited in the United States and Europe in both one-man and group shows, including: • American Scrapbook: Three Photojournalists, 75 Years (1980), with Lewis Hine and Michael (Tony) Vaccaro, a critically acclaimed show featuring news photos of America from the turn of the 20th century to the 1970s. • A Love Affair with New York City (1981), broke attendance records at Nikon House in Rockefeller Center, attracting more than 11,300 visitors. • La Magna Grecia: The Greek Heritage in Calabria (1984), initially exhibited at the • A Walk Through Urban America (1992), celebrating the 500th anniversary of America, sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York City. • Impressions of America (1997), a one-man show in St. Augustine, Florida • Made in Santa Barbara (2007), a group show of works by local photographers at the • Santi Visalli: Icons (2007), a selection of movie people at Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara • The Famous and the Infamous (2009), personalities and political protests of the 1960s and ‘70s in America at Wave Gallery in Brescia, Italy. • Icons of the Performing Arts (2010) at the Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara • Warhol: Dylan to Duchamp (2010) group show at Eric Firestone Gallery, Tucson, Arizona • Santi Visalli Photojournalist (2010) University Art Gallery at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo • A Walk Through Urban America (2011), cityscapes of America’s most important cities at the Chamber of Commerce in Messina, Italy Mr. Visalli has appeared on American, Brazilian, Japanese, and European radio and television programs, including a RAI-TV special on the most important Sicilians in the arts in New York. He is a former president of the Foreign Press Association of New York, whose 400 members, representing 60 countries, cover the United States for the world, and he served on the board of the Association of Italian Correspondents in North America. In 1996, he was made a Knight in the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy. In 2011, he was awarded a medal for his life achievements by the President of the Italian Republic. His files contain more than 200,000 photographs of well-known personalities of four decades, plus scenics, architecture, and cityscapes of major American cities. For information call 805-708-9393, write to santivisalli@cox.net, or view his Web site: thefinestphotos.com. Santi Visalli Photography, Inc.
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