Joseph Rodriguez exhibits with 'We're all people' in Maastricht

21 September 2024 – 2 February 2025

Fotomuseum aan het Vrijthof in Maastricht, the Netherlands, presents a major retrospective of the American documentary photographer Joseph Rodriguez from 21 September 2024 until 2 February 2025. The exhibition 'We're all people' shows 75 compelling photos of mostly marginalized groups of people and their struggles in everyday life. The images were taken in the 70s, 80s and 90s, mainly in New York City and Los Angeles.

With his extensive and impressive oeuvre, Joseph Rodriguez enjoys international acclaim in the photography world. As a visual storyteller, he often documents people who live at the bottom of society according to the norm. He hopes that his work can provide insight into the lives of these communities, and contributes to a better mutual understanding.

For the first European retrospective of Rodriguez, a selection has been made from five iconic series: TAXI, Spanish Harlem, Juvenile, East Side Stories, and LAPD. These projects show Rodriguez's development as a social documentary photographer. Guest curator of the exhibition 'We're all people' is the German gallery owner Bene Taschen from Cologne.

TAXI series, 220 West Houston Street, NY 1984 © Joseph Rodriguez

TAXI series, Meatpacking District, Greenwich Village, NY 1984

As a taxi driver from 1977 to 1987, Rodriguez captured the pulsating life of New York from his car. In his hometown, he also portrayed the Latin American residents of the Spanish Harlem district in the 1980s. The Juvenile series shows young offenders and those involved in the justice system. In East Los Angeles the photographer gave gang members a human face, and in the same city he followed police officers at work in 1994, just after the Rodney King riots.

The photographer and educator is friends with Jamel Shabazz, who exhibited at the museum in 2020. They share a special past and know the infamous Rikers Island prison in New York very well. From Maastricht, Joseph Rodriguez will participate in a photography project with detainees from the penitentiary in Sittard. This project was developed specifically for the exhibition.

TAXI series, Self Portrait, NY 1984

Joseph Rodriguez (Brooklyn, New York, 1951) studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. He taught at universities in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. The photographer exhibits in museums and galleries, and at festivals. His award-winning work has been published in leading magazines such as Esquire, GQ, National Geographic, Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Der Spiegel, Stern, and TIME. Photos are also included in the collections of the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. Rodriguez lives and works in New York.

The Rings, Spanish Harlem, NY 1987 © Joseph Rodriguez

Boy in Pool, Spanish Harlem, NY 1987 © Joseph Rodriguez

Michael Joseph: Lost & Found

By Michael Joseph

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 144 pages

Lost & Found documents a contemporary American subculture of young Travelers through raw, striking portraiture and intimate storytelling. These Travelers abandon home to move around the country by hitchhiking and freight train hopping in a nomadic, transient existence outside of mainstream society. Along their personal journey driven by wanderlust, escapism, or a search for transient jobs, they find a new family in their traveling friends.

The high of freedom, however, does not come without consequence. The black and white portraits are made in public, on the street, using natural light. Individual stories, as a collection, form a greater narrative. Over ten years in the making, Joseph’s portraits reveal the human condition. They capture courage, tenderness, and determination in his subjects that have been largely ignored and unseen.

An incredible book that we highly recommend! All About Photo

All About Michael Joseph

I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now

By Pauline Vermare

Publisher : Aperture

2024 | 440 pages

I’m So Happy You Are Here presents a much-needed counterpoint, complement, and challenge to historical precedents and the established canon of Japanese photography. This restorative history presents a wide range of photographic approaches brought to bear on the lived experiences and perspectives of women in Japanese society. Editors Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin, curator and writer Takeuchi Mariko, and photo-historians Carrie Cushman and Kelly Midori McCormick provide a critical historical and contemporary framework for understanding the work in three richly illustrated essays. Additional context is provided by an in-depth illustrated bibliography by Marc Feustel and Russet Lederman, and a selection of key critical writings from leading Japanese curators, critics, and historians such as Kasahara Michiko, Fuku Noriko, and others, many of which will be published in translation for the first time. While this book does not claim to be fully comprehensive or encyclopedic, its goal is to provide a solid foundation for a more thorough conversation about the contributions of Japanese women to photography—and an indispensable resource for anyone interested in a more robust history of Japanese photography.

Lisa McCord: Rotan Switch

By Lisa McCord

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2024 | 204 pages

Rotan Switch is the first monograph by Lisa McCord, documenting life on her grandparents’ cotton farm in the Arkansas Delta community of Rotan. It takes its name from the community’s central landmark—the railroad switch where farmers loaded their cotton bales onto trains headed out of the Delta. Although it hasn’t been used in years, it remains a potent symbol of the complex intersections of industry and agriculture, of race and injustice. Collected over the last forty-four years, these images and stories are a reflection on the people and places that have taught McCord the meaning of the word home. It is also a self-exploration into her inherently complicated role in this community as both the photographer and the granddaughter of the farm owner.
This publication is a long-term project, constructed from McCord's analog photographs, family snapshots and ephemera. Including, monochrome photographs, color polaroids, and recipes.

All About Lisa McCord

João Pina: Tarrafal

By João Pina

Publisher : GOST Books

2024 | 284 pages

João Pina draws upon his family history to tell the story of the Portuguese concentration camp at Tarrafal, Cape Verde which operated between 1936 and 1974. The visual history of the camp is told through the only known photographs taken inside the Tarrafal camp, combined with correspondence, archives, objects and Pina’s own contemporary photographs. Collectively these materials create a new dialogue about the Portuguese fascist regime of the past—and the resistance to it—on the 50th anniversary of its demise. In 1949, Pina’s grandfather Guilherme da Costa Carvalho—a young communist militant— was sent to the camp. Later that year Guilherme’s parents were granted unprecedented permission to visit their son and using a Rolleiflex camera they photographed all the living prisoners and the graves of the ones who had died in the camp. This extensive visual record—the only one ever made inside the concentration camp—was created with the intent of reporting back to the families of the other prisoners held in the camp or had died there. Seventy years later, in 2019, Pina began investigating a box in his family archive containing the negatives, contact sheets, vintage prints of these pictures made inside the camp, along with related letters and telegrams sent from his grandfather.

Joseph Rodriguez exhibits with 'We're all people' in Maastricht

21 September 2024 – 2 February 2025

More information about the exhibition

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