Every artist’s biography has its own founding myth, its initiatory stages, its rites of passage. The story of Joe Oppedisano has its roots and symbolic knots in the intertwining between Italy and America and in the continuous exchange between the two worlds. A socialist grandfather sent to the border islands of Ventotene, Ponza, and finally to the Tremiti Islands, an American father in search of his Calabrian origins, a mother from Gioiosa Jonica (RC) where Joe was born in 1954. An upbringing in Calabria, poised between ancestral immobility and the rapid transformations of Italy on the cusp of economic boom. Here occurs the first encounter with the enchanting world of the circus: under that magical tent, reality and imagination begin a dialogue never to be interrupted. At seven years old, in 1961, the big change: the family returns to the United States. Brooklyn sets the stage for a formation punctuated by photographic passion. After a course of study at Queens College in New York, he lands in 1973 at the New York School of Visual Arts. Two years later, he is already a freelance professional. His work takes him to Italy several times. In 1976, commissioned by Alitalia N.Y. to carry out a cultural reportage in Tuscany. The coincidence with the tragic earthquake in Friuli brings him to the scene of the disaster where he produces a feature for the Philadelphia Herald. In 1979, the International Center of Photography in New York invites him to participate in a major event in Venice 79 “La fotografia”. The urge to recognize oneself in the tradition of European culture and in Mediterranean warmth becomes more pressing. In 1982, he decides to settle in Milan: Oppedisano’s versatile path – characterized by a generous mixture of imaginative richness and rigorous precision, of restless freshness intolerant of schemes and impeccable professionalism – has now found its solid center of gravity. These are intense years, of reportage for various international magazines and above all of important advertising campaigns: Adidas, Hitachi, Pioneer, Panasonic, Grundig, Kodak, Apple, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Campari. Many of the most innovative advertisements of these years bear his unmistakable mark. Meanwhile, his tireless research continues. A multiple experimentation characterized by an active relationship with photographic medium and its technology: while exploring different worlds (from urban landscapes to portraits, from the circus to the theater, from the nude body to the body in costume, from the constructed image in the studio to the one captured during travel or in outdoor studios set up in squares), he uses disparate tools such as the large Polaroid 50×60 cm or the small disposable “use and throw away” camera, modifies his camera until it is capable of creating continuous sequences of frames, creating a possibility of temporal reading of the image. Thus, photo-mosaics, collages, silhouettes inhabited by the multiplicity of the unconscious are born. Numerous solo and group exhibitions, thematic monographs, publications in specialized magazines testify to this generous research where the acuity of vision merges with empathic softness and the speed of perception is capable of inhabiting the long times of human encounter.

Maria Sebregondi