For Puerto Rican New Yorkers, El Barrio has been both haven and touchstone, a community that has welcomed and inspired generations. No matter where you lived in New York, sooner or later all roads led to 116th Street and Lexington Avenue, the commercial and cultural heart of East Harlem.
Joseph Rodriguez was no exception: Though born and raised in Brooklyn — with detours at Rikers and a life-changing encounter with photography — he, as a teenager, liked to hang out at his uncle’s candy store and numbers spot where the streets were abuzz with music and life. Those early encounters led to a May 1990 National Geographic cover story and the most important project of his life after he spent the latter half of the 1980’s photographing El Barrio’s streets and residents in their homes and on the block.
Now, a revised version of that body of work will be on display at the Bronx Documentary Center, as well as in the new book, “Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the ’80s.”
While it is “easy to make gritty pictures of poverty,” Mr. Rodriguez was looking to go deeper and connect with people whose struggles he knew intimately as the son of a single mother.
“I carried this story for a long time before I could go out and make the work,” he said. “That was an important path for me to understand patience and waiting, connecting and trust.”
His images reflect an intimacy — and long-term commitment — that marks his later work in East Los Angeles, Romania and Puerto Rico. For him, this project was deeply personal, and still is.
“We’re not garbage people, we have a presence,” he said. “One thing that was extremely important was to show our children with some dignity. You see their strength. We’ve gone through hell and back, just like now in Puerto Rico. But we get up, and we fight back.”
Follow @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Joseph Rodriguez is on Instagram. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram.
