My great uncle Sal was known as a famous portrait photographer as far back as the mid-30s publishing hundreds of good looking men 90% of his work were male actors and models every once in a while I run into an original print and negative of somebody like this this is way before breast implants these breast right here are spectacular Don’t know who the woman is but she looks familiar
There are so many things that people don’t know about Sal Terracina when he was running around in the 30s being the great Saltar He was best friends with Tennessee Williams and they always talked about Key West that’s how Sal‘s little brother the famous captain Tony went to go hide out there in the 40s sal saw into the future and new his brother would become famous there and he could set up a mask photography studio above the oldest bar in key west also the original morgue and icehouse Sal did a lot of private readings above that bar crazy things went down in the bar and above we’ll talk about all the skeletons that were found Under the pool room I myself spent seven years working for my grandfather in that bar I will save all those stories for our book the Terracina masquerade
From the mid 30s till 1995 my great uncle Sal had photography masks studios Very close to time square this is one of the images he’s taking their
1979 that’s me on the left with the captains hat on with the star we are on our way to Cuba to rescue some spies that’s three of my boys from Jersey and the rest were born and raised Key West conchs That’s right we were bad asses
It took me a couple years to make a name for myself as a photographer in Key West back in the 70s when I came back to Jersey I had to do the same thing I got very lucky with some postcards and posters on the Jersey shore and I was rolling by 1984
I ran several ads in both our magazines New Jersey and New York within a three year period I have done over 200 nude and semi nude portfolios of exotic dancers and then there were the normal portfolios lots of those these two magazines also published over 1200 exotic dancers that I have photograph live on stage this could be a world record and a three-year period 1989 through 1992
This is my grandfather Captain Tony somehow they elected him mayor in 1989 the key west I took this photo of him in his office I just got a tip about a horse At the Meadowlands racetrack in Jersey my grandfather made a call right away he said put 2000 down on bountiful morning to win in the fifth we will hit that day