JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ | PHOTOGRAPHER

TWENTY YEARS OF PORTRAITS FROM ANOTHER AMERICA

For the past twenty years, the documentary photographer Joseph Rodriguez has worked all over the world, but his most deeply intimate projects have been his portraits of American struggle. “My aim is to get to the core of violence in America,” Rodriguez told me. “Not just the physical violence against one another but the quiet violence of letting families fall apart, the violence of unemployment, the violence of our educational system, and the violence of segregation and isolation.”

A new exhibition of Rodriguez’s work opens today at the Puerto Rican art space Taller Boricua, featuring photographs from his series “East Side Stories: Gang Life in East L.A.,” “Juvenile,” “Flesh Life,” “Sex in Mexico City,” “Still Here: Stories After Katrina,” and “Reentry in Los Angeles.” At Taller Boricua, he said, “it’s the first time that I get in a gallery, hang my photos on the walls, and I don’t have to explain anything to anyone. They get it immediately. They recognize it from their own experience, and it’s a great honor. It’s also very important because once there weren’t that many Latino photographers and the story was always told by someone else.” Here’s a selection of images from the show.

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