Joseph Rodríguez: Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the ’80s

On View: Nov 11 – Dec 23, 2017

Bronx Documentary Center Annex
364 E. 151st St, Bronx, NY 10455

Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the ’80s portrays a crucial moment in New York’s past—one that affirms our need to confront the city’s quickly morphing present. While the subjects depicted seem to be from another era, the problems of inequality, racial segregation, and marginalization of black and brown people have in fact remained. The faces and spaces in these photographs are necessary reminders of the human face of tragedy and triumph that continue to resonate in the present day.

Exhibition curated by Cynthia Rivera and Michael Kamber.

Exhibition text by Ed Morales, Joseph Rodriguez and Michael Kamber.

Spanish translations by Maria de la Paz Galindo.

Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the ’80s is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with City Council, The Donnelley Foundation, and Ghetto Film School.

Shot in the mid-to-late ’80s, Joseph Rodríguez’s powerful photographs bring us into the core of the neighborhood, capturing the spirit of people who survive despite the ravages of poverty, and more recently, the threat of gentrification and displacement. In a past and distant landscape littered with abandoned buildings, ominous alleyways, and the plague of addiction, the residents of Spanish Harlem persevered with flamboyant style and gritty self-reliance.

Rodriguez, himself a working-class Puerto Rican from the streets of Brooklyn, spent five years in “El Barrio” as the neighborhood is known. Working closely with families, residents, and the neighborhood’s social institutions, he attended birthdays, holy communions, funerals, demonstrations, graduation ceremonies, and quiet Sunday afternoons on the block.

Often, Rodriguez just hung out, spending time with his friends, waiting for a moment in time to raise his Leica. His vibrant Kodachrome images form the most powerful body of work in existence of New York’s Latino community in the bleak yet vital era of the 1980s.