About Mauro Marinelli

Mauro Marinelli is an artist, photographer, contractor, great cook, one-time novitiate, and former photojournalist. Born and raised in White Plains, New York to Italian immigrant parents, he earned a BFA in in Photography and English from Manhattanville College in 1977. His work is inspired by the work of his teachers, Ralph Gibson, Eva Rubenstein and Sean Kernan. In the late 1970s Mauro traveled around the US to photograph the last of the original Italian immigrants before they were gone. St. Martin’s Press published Marinelli’s book of photography, Old Timers: The Italians in 1979. The same year his photograph was used for the cover of Rock Fever (Triumph Book, Franklin Watts, 1979) and his photographic images illustrated Ellen Rabinowich’s novel about an aspiring rock musician who turns to Qualuudes when his problems with his divorced alcoholic mother become overwhelming. Fed up with Madison Avenue and the demands of commercial photography, Marinelli moved away from New York City to upstate New York where he farmed culinary herbs and established a successful contracting business. In the 1980s and early 90s, Marinelli exhibited his photographs at the Italian American Museums of San Francisco and the Bronx. In the last decade he has returned to his photography and completed three personal photo essays one of which is The Burden of Wings.