A book for a good cause

By Roberta Vitiello

Published in Il Globo

The 82 year old retired John Casamento has recently published "Never Work with Animals or Children", his photographic collection which has as its subjects children and animals. The photos were taken during his career and have been collected in a book with the intention of giving the proceeds from the sale to the Australian and New Zealand Fontan Registry of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, the major paediatric research centre in Australia.

 "My grandson Noah was born with a cardiac malfunction which meant him having only one functioning cardiac ventricle instead of two. This problem would put his life seriously in danger, also due to the fact that during the course of his life he would have had to undergo numerous open-heart surgeries". At the age of four, Noah who is now 19, underwent the Fontan Procedure, a specific operation for patients with various forms of one-ventricle heart, carried out by the surgeon Yves D'Udekem, founder of the ANZ Fontan Registry, which currently needs $200,000 to continue its research. John has promised to contribute the proceeds from the sale of the book to the Institute, to show his gratitude.

 Born of parents who originally came from the Aeolian Islands and migrated to Australia at age 18, John caught the photography "bug" from his father: "After 25 years in Australia, my father wanted to return to see his family in Italy and bought a camera. On his return, I asked him to lend it to me for a school outing with my friends and I immediately fell in love with it, when I was only 12 years old," John recounts. Photography was certainly his calling; in fact John practised the craft for 52 years, as a photojournalist mainly for "The Sun News Pictorial" which later became "The Herald Sun", the daily with the highest circulation in the whole of Australia, photographing politicians, celebrities, crime stories and much more.

 Among the famous celebrities with whom he has had the pleasure to work is also Pope John Paul 11, he accompanied the latter to Australia: "The pope's secretary asked me to sit beside him; I would have never asked the pope to have a photo taken with him, but I did what was asked of me!" concluded John.

Roughly translated from article originally published in Il Globo