Profession: Photojournalist

Oscar Vianello was born in Adria (Rovigo) on 30th May 1893. He was the son of Romana Vianello, a midwife who gave him her surname.
In this small town in the Veneto region he completed his elementary studies and, probably, his technical training. Unfortunately, we do not have much information about the early part of his life.

As the only son of an unmarried mother, he was exempted from military service at the age of 18, but in 1915, at the age of 22, with the start of the Great War, he was enlisted in an Infantry unit stationed in Bologna.
It was during this period in Bologna that he met the girl who was to become his wife in 1919, Luisa Lambertini.

Once the war period was over, not excluding that his passion for photographic art may have been born at that juncture, he chose Sanremo as the place for the future residence of his family, which he had created by getting married, and went to live in an apartment in Via Corradi. In those years very important events of all kinds were starting to take place in Sanremo and a photographer could find many work opportunities.

On 25 July 1920, his son Omar was born in Riccione, during the summer season that year in that Romagna town.
He had successfully involved his wife in his passion for photography and together they became correspondents for the most important national and international newspapers, eventually obtaining the title of "publicist journalist".

Taking note of the international trend of this profession, he called his company with an English name (a rare thing in the period of the twenty-year period): « THE UNIVERSAL PRESS PHOTO AGENCY - Oscar Vianello - SANREMO (Italy) ».

In addition to Oscar and Luisa Vianello, Luisa's young sister Jolanda (born in 1901), Oscar's sister-in-law, also worked in this company as a secretary.

All the captions, which can still be found today behind each original Oscar Vianello photo, were typed on tissue paper by Miss Jolanda Lambertini, and all the parcels sent to the train station were her responsibility.

Interestingly enough, Jolanda Lambertini, who died on February 18, 1989, was known in Sanremo as "Signorina Vianello", as also recorded on her tombstone in the family tomb at the Sanremo cemetery in Valle Armea.

Unfortunately Oscar Vianello's life was not long: a stroke, probably haemorrhagic, struck him suddenly and without a chance, on the morning of Monday 13th March 1933 while he was developing some photographic plates in his dark room.
He died at the age of 40, leaving his 12-year-old son Omar an orphan, his wife of 38 years a widow and, ironically, with the newly purchased flat in Via Roma (Palazzo Guidi).

13 March was to be the day of the move to the new house.

(source: "Famija Sanremasca" from the periodical "A Gardiöra")