From 1948 Bertolino studied at the first fine-art photography department in the United States created in 1946 at the California School of Fine Arts (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute), founded by Ansel Adams, directed by Minor White, and staffed by such leading practitioners as Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model, and Edward Weston.
[1] Its modern photography curriculum advanced the academic standing of the medium and spawned a unique group of photographers who went on to become important contributors to visual culture.
[2] The exhibition Perceptions at the San Francisco Museum of Art on August 10, 1954, showcased a decade of photography in San Francisco and the Bay Area by forty-six photographers exhibited in Perceptions, among them were “Distinguished students” including John Bertolino with Zoe [Lowenthal] Brown, Benjamen Chinn, Bob Hollingsworth, Gene Petersen, Nata Piaskowski, F. W. Quandt, Jr. Donald Ross, Charles Wong, and Harold Zegart.
Photography from Bertolino's School of Fine Arts years featured in the exhibition and publicationThe golden decade : photography at the California School of Fine Arts, 1945–55[3] His ‘The Mandolin Player’, of this period, taken in Italy in 1950, featured in his first solo show Photographs of Italy by John Bertolino[4] at the de Young museum in San Francisco, California,[5] described by critic Alfred Frankenstein as “proletarian realism... all very true to life because it is also very true to the art of photography.
[6] The same image was selected in 1955 by curator Edward Steichen for The Family of Man, a world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition seen by 9 million visitors.