After being raised in a family that faced violence and drug addiction, Joseph Rodriguez used his experiences to help other people re-envision the personal challenges of living in communities that have been impacted by gang activity, incarceration and addiction.
Photoville, New York’s largest photography event, is rolling into Los Angeles for the first time in late April. The free pop-up photography festival will rise in a veritable village of repurposed shipping containers, immersive photo cubes and giant LED boxes at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City.
In the wake of World War I, Puerto Rican and Latin American immigrants first began arriving in New York, settling in a little corner of upper Manhattan around 110th Street and Lexington Avenue, which is now known as Spanish Harlem. With a foothold firmly established in El Barrio, the neighborhood blossomed after World War II, when a new wave of immigration transformed the face of the city.
To coincide with his Exhibition at Cologne’s Galerie Bene Taschen, we catch up with Joseph Rodriguez to discover more about his poignant ’80s snapshots of El Barrio.
Midway through Freedomland – the second of Richard Price’s three novels set in the fictional New Jersey city Dempsey – an ambitious local reporter scrutinizes the apartment of a mother grieving over the disappearance of her young son.
It took five years for Brooklyn-Born photographer Joseph Rodriguez to complete the Spansih Harlem series, his most expansive, thorough, and personal body of work to date. A Puerto Rican New Yorker born in the 50s, Rodriguez grew up strongly Aware of the stereotypical narratives attributed to his community across the Mainstream media – a reductive, simplistic discourse he always felt the urge to defy. „As a Latino, I wanted to own my Story,“ he tells us. „That’s why it took me so Long to make this work – I wanted to do the opposite of what the media did, and go in deeper, give a broader, wider lens view of what it truly meant to be a part of this community of East Harlem, ‚El Barrio‘.“
Joseph Rodriguez fotografierte in den 80er Jahren die Straßen und Häuser des New Yorker Viertels „Spanish Harlem“. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei nicht Kriminalität und Gewalt, sondern die Anwohner selbst. Sie gewährtem dem Fotografen Zugang zu ihrem Gemeinschaftsleben – so entstanden intime Fotografien, die vom 20. April bis zum 30. Juni in der Kölner Galerie Bene Taschen ausgestellt werden.
Galerie Bene Taschen hosts David LaChapelle’s „Recollections in America” and Joseph Rodriguez’s „Spanish Harlem“ joint exhibition at its Cologne venue.
Incredible portraits capture characters of the troubled neighborhood at a time when outsiders wouldn’t dare to enter:
In den Achtzigerjahren war das New Yorker Viertel „Spanish Harlem“ nur für Insider zugänglich. Joseph Rodriguez zeigt in seinen Bildern den Geist der Nachbarschaft.