Emma Vitallo
Photography
Ours
This semester I have been researching and reading about artistic relationships, specifically Just Kids – detailing the collaborative partnership between Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. I began working collaboratively and using my peers’ photographic knowledge and personal practices to understand more about my own photographic practice, style, and rituals. By making environmental portraits on a whim of five of my closest peers turned mentors turned collaborators and friends I am documenting our shared experiences in locations they occur. These locations are specific and significant to our connections – each of us shares these spaces with each other, our ideas, our work. They are ours.
Drew on Our Derive, Archival Inkjet Print, 11x17 in, 2022
Amy in Our Classroom, Archival Inkjet Print, 11x17 in, 2022
Bernadette in Our Studio, Archival Inkjet Print, 11x17 in, 2022
Emilee on Our Way Out, Archival Inkjet Print, 11x17 in, 2022
Edwin Outside Our Gallery, Archival Inkjet Print, 11x17 in, 2022
Artist Bio
Emma Jo Vitallo is a photographic artist from the suburbs of Chicago. She is in conversation with themes regarding what comes after life, exploring the many different relationships she has had, and processing trauma through vernacular imagery, environmental self-portraits, and portraits of others. Vitallo is interested in photography as a tool for communicating memories and their complimentary feelings, to cope with dissociative thoughts in a part-fictional, part-autobiographical way. She explores the medium of photography in various lights from alternative processes like contact printing pinhole paper negatives, to heavy photographic manipulation in Photoshop. By using assorted approaches to make an image, Vitallo is making every effort to understand the subliminal questions of existence. Vitallo received her BFA from Northern Illinois University in 2022, where she will continue her education in the MFA program. She has volunteered in the photography lab for the 2021-22 school year on campus. Her work was exhibited in three exhibitions hosted by the university including the Annette and Johns Gallery and Gallery 215. At the end of March 2022, she participated in the attempt at breaking the world record for the World’s Largest Paper Snowflake with Jessica Labatte and the photography department at NIU.