Exhibition: Urban Narratives – The City as Canvas (April 2025)
Curated by Fern Messa Joson
Vinnie Patella is an urban photographer based in Youngstown, Ohio. His work captures the emotional atmosphere of cities through spontaneous encounters with light, texture, and space. Raised in a post-industrial town shaped by both its mafia legacy and steel mill past, Patella found few early avenues for creative expression. It wasn’t until later in life—after years in the business world and collegiate football—that photography emerged as a personal, almost spiritual, form of discovery.
Informed by intuition and curiosity, Patella’s photographs are not composed so much as uncovered—moments caught mid-transformation. Recently featured in the 26th Annual WAH Center Salon Show, his work seeks the quiet geometry and narrative weight in everyday urban landscapes. He offers a perspective often missed in the pace of city life, capturing fragments of place that resonate with stillness, symbolism, and time.
Currently Exhibiting in: New York City
Interconnected
- Medium: Archival pigment print
- Dimensions: 11″ x 14″ print (framed to 24″ x 24″)
- Year: 2025
- Price: $800
- Description:
In Interconnected the shadow of a leafless tree stretches across a corrugated storefront gate, casting nature’s fleeting imprint upon an otherwise rigid facade. A man walks his bicycle past the scene, caught in a moment of near-stillness. This interplay of light and shadow, of movement and structure, offers a poetic meditation on the subtle relationships between people and the urban environments they inhabit. Patella’s composition draws attention to the unnoticed details that shape a city’s emotional landscape—inviting viewers to see familiar places anew.
Moment of Repair
- Medium: Archival pigment print
- Dimensions: 11″ x 14″ print (framed to 24″ x 24″)
- Year: 2024
- Price: $800
- Description:
In Moment of Repair, captures a layered moment within the urban environment, where decay, resilience, and quiet labor converge. An aging vehicle, partially entombed within a graffiti-covered garage, sits at the center of the composition. Flanked by a man in focused motion, the scene evokes questions of repair and memory—what is preserved, what is forgotten, and how cities are continuously held together by unseen hands. The composition’s saturated tones and precise framing underscore the artist’s sensitivity to rhythm and narrative within overlooked city spaces.
Urban Narratives Exhibition Details
Dates: April 3 – April 10, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 3 | 6 PM – 8 PM
Theme: Turning the city into a canvas—capturing raw, vibrant energy through graffiti, street photography, and more.
Artistic Vision
For Vinnie Patella, photography is both a form of visual journaling and a metaphysical inquiry. His process is rooted in openness—wandering, noticing, allowing moments to present themselves. By honoring what’s often overlooked or impermanent, his images ask us to reconsider what we believe defines a place.
Influenced by minimalism, abstraction, and modern street photography, Patella sees each photograph as a portal—one that preserves the quiet choreography of city life, urging viewers to slow down and look again.
Guided audio experience
For accessibility, the full video transcript is provided below for those who prefer to read or are unable to listen.
“You’re looking at Interconnected—a moment of stillness framed in motion. A man walks his bicycle past a corrugated metal gate, across which the shadow of a leafless tree stretches like a memory. The setting is ordinary: a storefront, a sidewalk, the everyday rhythm of a city. But Vinnie Patella captures something more—a quiet intersection of nature, infrastructure, and human presence.
Let your eye move slowly across the composition. The man isn’t the subject in a traditional sense—he’s part of the environment, moving through it, almost becoming it. His posture is relaxed, contemplative. He could be thinking about a destination, or nothing at all. But his presence anchors the image, reminding us that cities are not just steel and stone—they’re living, breathing spaces shaped by the people who pass through them.
Notice the play of light and shadow. The tree’s silhouette is temporary, shifting with the sun, but here it’s held in place—made permanent through the photograph. This fleeting imprint of nature softens the industrial façade, offering a kind of visual grace.
Patella invites us to see the poetry in the everyday. In Interconnected, we’re not witnessing a grand event, but rather a subtle reminder: even the smallest moments—an afternoon walk, a shadow on a wall—can carry weight, rhythm, and connection.”