Angelo Rizzuto

Who was Angelo Rizzuto?

Angelo A. Rizzuto was an American photographer who worked in Manhattan from 1952 until his death. His street photography opus of 60,000 images lay in file cabinets unviewed until 2001.

Little is known of Rizzuto's life. He grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and graduated from Wittenberg College in Ohio in 1931. He attended Harvard Law School in mid-1930s. His father had a successful construction business, but when the father died Rizzuto and his brothers fought over the estate, which drove Rizzuto to a suicide attempt. After drifting around the country and working odd jobs, he settled in Manhattan.

For many years he was psychiatrically unfit, variously tormented by the belief that he was the victim of a global conspiracy of communists, perverts and Jews.

Every day at 2 p.m. between May 1952 and June 1964, Rizzuto would venture out with a camera to record images for what was to be a vast encyclopedic kaleidoscope of Manhattan, a book to be called Little Old New York.

Rizzuto photographed New York's inhabitants and ended every roll of film with a portrait of himself.