Just when we were preparing to write about him, Anthony Riccio left us. He left us at just 69 years old, all of a sudden and without a fuss, which was just his style. Anthony had become a photographer as a child, developing photographic negatives in his house’s bathroom in New Haven, Connecticut. For his whole life, he worked as a librarian at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library, where he took care of the special collections and guided tours of the historical buildings during his free time.

He always loved the past, but he loved people more than objects. Anthony Riccio’s photographs are many embraces to old emigrants and to the bygone generations of Italian America. When you look at them, you can perceive the affection of the photographer. When you heard him speak, you had the confirmation of it: Riccio searched for the humanity in his subjects. He got to know them, he listened to them, he valued them for what they were.