From behind bars to behind the camera
Former convict captures humans of New York’s forgotten fringes
“There’s only a few things you can do in prison. Either you can get in trouble or read or exercise.” DONATO DI CAMILLO STREET PHOTOGRAPHER
When Donato Di Camillo got out of prison in 2011, he took up street photography and experienced another kind of release — more of a cathartic scream.
The New York resident was having difficulty finding employment. His family helped him buy a camera and he hit the streets of Staten Island taking pictures. He found he was drawn to people “on the fridges” who he got talking to and then photographed. He shared these raw, intimate moments online at donatodicamillo.com.
In just five years, Di Camillo transformed from inmate at a Petersburg, Va., medium-security federal prison to a buzzed-about street photographer whose images have been shared on websites from Ireland to China.
In some of the photographs, his subjects are laughing, in others they are scowling. In many, it’s difficult to discern between cry or laugh. All of them are little screams to Di Camillo.
“I have a lot of frustration in me. I think we all do. It’s a way for me to channel that,” says Di Camillo by phone from Staten Island.
Photography is a tool to navigate through life without having to say much, he says.
While the 47-year-old’s swift evolution shows the power of passion and artistic expression, he says the prison system didn’t help much.
“There’s only a few things you can do in prison. Either you can get in trouble or read or exercise.”
Di Camillo was sentenced to 36 months behind bars for crimes in connection with New York City’s Colombo crime family. He spent more than two years in prison.
He always had an interest in photography and with time on his hands, but no access to a camera, Di Camillo hit the books. He pored over National Geographic, Smithsonian and Life magazines he’d traded for postage stamps.
While his cellmate mocked his artistic curiosity, Di Camillo read about the esthetics of composition and admired the work of street photographers including Bruce Gilden, whose difficult portraits of people on the streets are reminiscent of Di Camillo’s portfolio.
DiCamillo can recall his first subject, a woman in line at a food bank arguing with the person dispensing food for an extra bologna sandwich. “It was disheartening,” he says.
His exposure to Americans on these disturbing fringes stirred something in him.
“It was how I saw things when I came home. There were a lot more homeless and mentally ill, a lot more than I had noticed, maybe because I wasn’t looking before. Now my eyes are wide open,” he says. “It sparked a human interest in me. I was just curious as to why and how they wound up like they did — and what the government is doing.”
In a photo essay titled “The Fringe,” mangled toes poke through broken Polo shoes in one image, a man bites down on a dandelion stem with smoke stained teeth in another, yet another reveals scarred forearms.
His approach has allowed him to capture hundreds of intimate moments that he began to share online, getting noticed on National Geographic’s “Your Shot” photo submission community.
“I put my hand out with a big smile and I tell them there’s no harm,” he says of making the connection. “The photograph is the least important thing. For me it’s communicating with people and having them become more at ease.”
Di Camillo’s eye as a street photographer is better for his experiences in prison, struggling through the systems as many of his subjects may have done.
“Who better to understand and to see the dark world that’s around us than somebody who’s been exposed to the darkest crevasse of our society?” says Dave Gussak, an art therapist and professor at Florida State University, who has studied the effects of art in prisons. “How much further on the fringe can you get than somebody who’s been put in prison?”
The act of creating art has been shown to improve the mood of inmates and can influence their environment, according to Gussak’s research. It can also act as a safe emotional release.
That Di Camillo equates his photography to “screaming” makes a lot of sense to Gussak. “Art becomes a great holding piece for one’s emotional expression,” he says. “If he was to stand on the corner and scream, no one would accept it.”
Though much of Di Camillo’s early photography work on the “fringes” was dark both in content and compo- sition, there’s plenty of light in Di Camillo’s world now.
He is starting to make a living off the craft, selling prints and instructing street photography workshops for amateurs.
In a recent series called “Beach Body Bingo,” Di Camillo photographed people on Coney Island beach.
These photos have a new vibrancy — children playing on the shores, bathers gazing up at the sky. The colour could indicate that Di Camillo is growing comfortable in his craft, says Gussak, ready to play with a more challenging visual palette.
Or maybe Di Camillo just needs to scream a little less these days.