Over time, photography has become a sort of first language for me. To be an immigrant is to have been born elsewhere; this is an inescapable fact that plays a fundamental and determining role in one’s life. Looking back at the photographs in this exhibition, which I made mostly in the early 1970’s, I realize that photography has enabled me to deal with the uprooting nature of immigration.

Like most children I adapted quickly to life in the New World. I understood that there was one basic reason why we and thousands of others had come to Canada - work. Immigration became a life-long search for work, the key to a better life. Talking about work in our community in those days was as natural as breathing. It became the very stuff of life, which permeated our parents’ very being. It was such an intense pre-occupation that it was transferred to us, the children, as if by osmosis and as naturally as parental love.

I remember happy occasions like wedding banquets in church basements, where the children played between the rows of long folding tables, waiting for the meal to start, which was usually greasy but delectable fried chicken. The adults greeted each other warmly, always asking about work first, and only then inquiring about the health of the rest of the family, and perhaps about news from Italy.

“Buona sera, Bruno. Are you working?” Giuseppe might ask, embracing his paesano, or fellow villager. And Bruno might answer, “Why, yes, I just got a job working on Highway 401. Pick and shovel. A good job,” Only then would it be appropriate for them to talk about more “mundane” matters. Therefore it was natural for me to equate immigration with work, for we were economic refugees, and the haven that Canada offered us was based on work.

I first documented my family, and then my community. One of my earliest recollections of my father, the contadino (peasant farmer) now turned construction worker, was of his arrival home at night during the summer months. Haggard, sweaty, and tired, he always entered through the back door that opened onto one of those minuscule backyards that are typical of the Victorian semi-detached houses in Toronto’s historic Little Italy. He put down his black, dusty lunch box, and removed his hard hat. Then sitting in a low chair in the kitchen, he proceeded to remove his mud-encrusted work boots. His feet were sweaty and smelly, the source of many an affectionate joke in the family. As he removed his socks, his toes wiggled, as if breathing after a day of being constrained in wool and steel toed boots. His feet, which hardly ever saw the sun, were stark white, and bleached, in start contrast to his deeply sunburned face and arms. The evening light, entering from the window at his back, engulfed him in a warm glow. My father savored the moment. For me, it was a stunning sight, forever etched in my memory, a photograph that I did not make.

Whenever I used to drive with my father through the streets of my adopted city, Toronto, he would inevitably point out certain buildings or streets where he worked as part of a construction crew. And, again, he would tell me yet another anecdote about the vast quantities of bricks that he carried around that site; or the overtime that they were required to do, pouring cement foundations in the wintry dark days of November; and sometimes he remembered a job site where an accident occurred because of lax or non existent safety regulations.

Through it all, his telling and retelling exuded a strange pride, not showy and loud, but a quiet pride, subtle and sweet, that always triggered memories of the lush taste of Sicilian prickly pears that he would buy for me around Christmastime. I began to realize that my father was not merely a worker, but a builder of my new country, which he helped to build by carrying bricks and mixing mortar. He related to the city through work. His were the words of an elder, warm and caressing, and as I relive them, my mind comfortably wanders back and forth in time, and I recall my own way of relating to the city, through the photographic encounters that have spawned many of the images in the book and exhibition.

One memorable occasion I was photographing a group of men playing bocce, and one of them stopped me and demanded to know why I was taking these pictures. As I sheepishly offered that it was my modest intention to do a book about immigrants, he declared in a dead-pan voice: “make sure your tell the truth about immigration”. And what would that be, I boldly asked. His reply, once again, was decisive and swift: “L’America non è oro; è lavoro. E il santo dollaro non è’ altro che dolore.” (America is not gold; it is work. And the sacred dollar is nothing but pain and suffering.)

In both the book and the exhibition, I did not concern myself with trying to define an entire community. Each image is the result of a personal experience that occurred during an unplanned voyage of self-discovery; a voyage for which I never had to leave the physical confines of my neighborhood. It is a voyage that started with the Queen Frederica. I still have a postcard of that ship sailing in New York harbor, on the wall above by worktable. Even if I don’t look at it too often these days, I am always conscious of its presence, and it reminds me of my ongoing journey.

Vincenzo Pietropaolo would like to thank the following people for their support and contribution to this exhibition and catalogue: Maria Cocchiarelli, Curator, without whose vision this exhibition would not have been possible; Dr. Joseph V. Scelsa, president of the Italian American Museum; Michael Esguerra, graphic designer, for his creative approach to the exhibition catalogue; Emily Gear, Director of the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum; Irene Zerbini and Giuliana Colalillo for their essays; Laura Springolo and Domenico Pietropaolo for their help in translation.