The history of Dionysus Press shares the rich experiences of Dennis Marsico, a photographer of more than 25 years. The Dionysus Press artist books are a blending of the photographer’s image-making talent with acquired letterpress and bindery skills.

In 1984 Dennis Marsico received a grant from the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, which resulted in a comparative photo-essay entitled The Italian Hilltown and the American Main Street Small Town. The photographs were exhibited at the il Diaframma Gallery in Milan and the Graham Foundation Gallery in Chicago. During this period his photographs were accepted for permanent collection in the Corcoran Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography and the Carnegie Museum of Art. In 1985, in collaboration with the Italian architectural critic Antonio Saggio, a second Graham Foundation grant was awarded. The project was a comprehensive study of the work of Giuseppe Terragni, an Italian neo-realist architect working in Milan and Como during the 1930’s. The photographs were published as a book entitled Giuseppe Terragni, Vita e Opere.

From 1987 to 2000 Marsico concentrated his efforts on editorial travel photography. He was commissioned regularly by Travel Holiday, Travel & Leisure, National Geographic Traveler and The New York Times Sophisticated Traveler. In 1992 he won the Lowell Thomas Award given by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation for the best magazine black and white photography. The story was entitled Winter in Tuscany, written by Saul Bellow. Again in 1993 Marsico received the award for a photo-essay entitled Paradise, a story that documented 13 towns in the USA named Paradise.

In 1993 Absolut Vodka commissioned Marsico for a series of 16 travel vodka ads. Among those were Absolut Rome, Absolut Portugal, Absolut Seville and Absolut Polynesia.

The stock agency Corbis selected Marsico in 1995 to produce a photographic survey of Italy, addressing cultural variance from the northern lake region to Calabria. Continuing in this observation style for the Encyclopedia Britannica Marsico created virtual reality photographs of the major architectural landmarks of Europe. Britannica used these images in their transformation from print to digital information.

With the advent of large-scale digital printing, Marsico made the decision to reenter the art arena, after a fifteen-year hiatus. In 2000, Mellon Bank commissioned a mural entitled Two Bucks in Deer Lakes Park (7’x7’ four panel print).

In the spring of 2001 the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngtown, Ohio exhibited a 4 feet by 30 feet inkjet print entitled Rimini. Paralleling the print, the same image was recreated as a viewer controlled virtual reality movie on a large plasma monitor. The image depicted the chaos of an Italian beach in August.

A marked change of focus occurred in 2001 with the formation of Dionysus Press. Marsico moved from making clever photographs of people in specific places to photo-essays with social context.  The first editions published in 2002 were Right Noise and Policing Pleasure, each addressing pertinent political issues of the time.

In October 2005 Marsico was part of the exhibit Messages and Communications at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh.  His installation, Passion and Politics, amplified his sentiments by way of a cylindrical "Rare Book Room" divided into polarized points of view.

The photographer continues his passion for photography along with the craft of letterpress printing.