As a taxi driver in the 70s and 80s, photographer Joseph Rodriguez captured the intensity of New York City from the driver’s seat. He talks to us about his childhood, learning from the greats, and his ‘get close’ mantra
Thirty years before anyone had heard of Uber or Lyft, Joseph Rodriguez—born, raised, and still living in Brooklyn—was driving a taxi in New York City. He was driving to put himself through school at the International Center of Photography after having kicked heroin. (“I got into cab driving,” he says, “because I was too weak to get a stand-up job.”)
Rodriguez drove a cab from 1977 to 1985, and in the last two of those years, he was studying to be a photographer. He lost his first set of gear in a classic ’70s New York stabbing and mugging, but with a new camera, he documented what he saw on the job.
edited by Jose Klap and team
Bevor Joseph Rodríguez’ Karriere als Dokumentarfotograf begann, verdiente er sein Geld als Taxifahrer: Durch sein Autofenster fotografierte er Passanten, Gäste, Szenen im New York der achtziger Jahre.
A street photographer has spent nearly three years secretly capturing images of unassuming New Yorkers‘ text messages, which range from heartbreaking to downright bizarre. Jeff Mermelstein, 63, from Brooklyn, has been using his iPhone to snap photos of strangers‘ cellphone screens on the street since October 2017, documenting both the intimate and mundane details of their private lives through their text messages.
After over three decades shooting the streets of NYC, Jeff Mermelstein shifted his camera’s lens to a more specific corner — New Yorkers’ text conversations.
Das Berliner Museum für Fotografie eröffnet am 16. Juli 2020 die Sonderausstellung „FOTOGRAFIE. Wolfgang Schulz und die Fotoszene um 1980“. Im Mittelpunkt steht das Magazin „FOTOGRAFIE. Zeitschrift internationaler Fotokunst“ und sein Herausgeber Wolfgang Schulz. Anhand von rund 240 Arbeiten von Wolfgang Schulz und anderer Fotograf*innen beleuchtet die Ausstellung eine wichtige Zeit des Umbruchs in der Geschichte der westdeutschen Fotografie.
At the beginning of the nineties, Joseph Rodríguez documented the daily lives of gangsters at Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, using a Leica M2 and an M6. He speaks about the brothers Javier and Mark, whom he met while doing research for his East Side StoriesGang Life in East LA series, and what became of them.
