“What I was hungry for, when I was getting into my career, was to speak about a community I was close to, from a different spin.”
– Jospeh Rodriguez, photographs of Spanish Harlem in the 1980s
Joseph Rodriguez’s photographs from the 1980s capture the vibrancy of New York’s El Barrio (Spanish Harlem). He shows us the people, and touches on the social issues they face.
These photographs are rooted in a university project in which Rodriguez and his fellow students tried to protect the tenants of neighbourhood buildings under the threat of gentrification. Directed by their teacher Fred Ritchin, the students made black-and-white photographs for court cases showing how landlords had let residential buildings deteriorate so that they could be renovated and then rented for more money to wealthier outsiders.
When the project ended, Rodriguez stayed with the communities, shooting their lives in colour.
“The only time local newspapers mentioned El Barrio was when crimes were committed. I knew I had to spend time to try and break these stereotypes. It’s important to show how that era was for people, to show their grit and resilience against social injustice.”
– Joseph Rodriguez
“Cindy was about 18 and doing a lot of drugs at the time. But she was also one of the loudest mouths on the block. She had that big laugh and I had to capture that.”
– Joseph Rodriguez
“This image ran on the cover of National Geographic. While walking around a housing project, I saw this young girl stood in the hallway protecting her puppy. I liked it because it showed a sense of warmth and sweetness in a neighbourhood that was very tough and rough.”
– Joseph Rodriguez
“This was a Bible class on Easter Sunday – passing by I saw the word ‘abomination’ on the board. In this photograph I wanted to reference the classroom experience, as well as the abominations that happened in the community – poverty, crime, drug addiction, Aids, gentrification.”
– Jospeh Rodriguez
“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
“This is a lookout for police as drug dealing is happening in the building. The man in the forefront said to me “I can make more money out here than working at McDonald’s.” This is the same building where Monique and the Rodriguez family lived.”
– Joseph Rodriguez
“I came from a fractured home, fell into drugs, went to prison twice, and wasted five to 10 years of my youth that way,” he says. “I know what drugs, poverty and crime can do to a family, but I also know that redemption is very much a part of my narrative.
– Joseph Rodriguez
“This was a very hard, very poor, very tough block at the time. but what’s important to me is the sense of dignity that these boys have by putting on a suit. The boy on the left can’t even afford a tie but he still wears a suit. This is where I started to understand what the word ‘respect’ means to people.”
“This is a portrait of Monique in her bedroom. She was angry because her mum would not let her go to play outside due to the drug dealing that was happening in hallways of their building.”
“I started my series in black and white and then changed to color because I knew how important color was to the culture—the colors they paint in the house, the colors on the saints that they have, the colors of the clothes. So I made that conscious decision to switch and also, I needed to work. I was a young photographer and I realized I couldn’t get work just shooting in black and white.”
Spanish Harlem, New York’s oldest barrio, is the U.S. mecca where Puerto Ricans first established themselves in the 1940s. One of America’s most vital centers of Latino culture, Spanish Harlem is home to 125,000 people, half of whom are Latino. Shot in the mid-to-late 80s, Joseph Rodriguez’s superb photographs bring us into the core of the neighborhood, capturing a spirit of a people that survives despite the ravages of poverty, and more recently, the threat of gentrification and displacement.
Via: Bronx Documentary Center, Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the ‘80s by Power House books