Artist Statement
These photographs have been drawn from an ongoing series called Family Records which was begun in 1998 to document members of immediate and extended families of the photographer and his wife. The majority of the portrait subjects live in or near Akron, Ohio, former home to the country’s major rubber and tire producers including Goodyear, Goodrich, and Firestone. Doylestown, Barberton, and other more rural communities neighboring Akron serve as locations for many of these images along with Akron proper. Process Statement
From 1998 through 2003 the photographs were made on 4 x 5 inch film. From 2004 to the present, the pictures have been made on 4 x 5 or 8 x 10 inch film. While earlier pictures are 20 x 24 inch silver-gelatin prints, since the mid-2000’s the portraits, in black and white or color, have been made as archival inkjet prints. The full size print for a 4 x 5 inch negative portrait is a 32 x 40 inch image on a 36 x 44 inch sheet. The full size print for an 8 x 10 inch negative portrait is a 40 x 50 inch image on a 44 x 54 inch sheet.

 

 

Joseph Vitone was raised in Akron, Ohio, where he was born in 1954. He attended the Maine College of Art, where he graduated with a B.F.A. in photography in 1981. He earned an M.F.A. in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1983. He has taught at the Florida Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is currently Professor of Photocommunications at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas where he has lived with his family since 1991. He teaches both traditional as well as digital photography and electronic media. He has received a MA-AA/National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and has been named a senior Fulbright scholar in fine art. He has lectured on his photography at multiple venues including places in China, France, Japan, Malaysia, and Viet Nam. Involved in international education, he has lead American students on study abroad programs to China, France, and Japan. With a focus on documentary work, he has also worked with students at schools outside of the U.S. first as a Fulbright scholar in Costa Rica in 2001 and more recently in France and Thailand. His work has been widely exhibited including one person exhibitions at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, Instituto Cultural Peruano-Norteamericano in Lima, Peru, the Oregon Center for Photographic Arts in Portland, and the Houston Center for Photography in Texas. His work is held in a number of significant collections including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the California Museum of Photography, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and the Smithsonian Institution Museum of American History.