Spanish Harlem by Joseph Rodríguez, made from 1985 to 1990 in East Harlem, Manhattan, documents the family, street, religious, and social life of its Puerto Rican and Latino residents. It began with an International Center of Photography assignment on neighborhood gentrification, then continued independently after graduation, informed by Rodríguez's teenage visits to his uncle's local candy store and his own Puerto Rican identity.
Working against news coverage that associated El Barrio largely with crime, Rodríguez sought not to deny poverty, drugs, AIDS, or violence, but to place them beside the neighborhood's everyday bonds. The project examines cultural identity and historical memory through a sustained focus on family, which he described as its core. Birthdays, First Communions, funerals, demonstrations, graduations, games, and quiet Sundays make ordinary interactions part of the public record.
Across the color photographs, residents appear in homes, shops, churches, streets, and social clubs. Stoop portraits connect domestic relationships to public architecture, while horizontal interiors frame children among windows and televisions. Rodríguez connected the prominent use of color to apartments, celebrations, saints, clothing, churches, and homes, treating it as an expression of the culture he photographed.
The initial student project combined black-and-white slides with audio recordings. For his independent work, Rodríguez moved from black and white to Kodachrome color slides, using a Leica and initially limiting himself to roughly two rolls a week. Equally formative was his slow, relationship-based method. He sat at kitchen tables, helped children with homework, accompanied residents on errands, and waited for familiarity before photographing. Works from the series exist as chromogenic museum prints and Cibachrome exhibition prints.
In May 1990, the project became the 26-page National Geographic cover story "Growing Up in East Harlem." The National Museum of American Art and Distributed Art Publishers issued Spanish Harlem in 1994, followed by a 2003 powerHouse reissue and the expanded, re-edited Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the '80s in 2017. The Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired Carlos and Puerto Rican Flag and included them in Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art in 2013-14. Supported by a New York State Foundation for the Arts grant, the series was subsequently presented at the Bronx Documentary Center, Galerie Bene Taschen, and Photoville, and appeared in Rodríguez's 2024-25 retrospective at Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof.
