When Sophie Rivera died earlier this yr, we shed a fearless and groundbreaking photographer whose enthusiasm for self-discovery was unparalleled. As a freelancer in the 1970s, and as a female of Puerto Rican descent, Rivera actually had to “hustle” for assignments, claimed Dr. Martin Hurwitz, her partner of 60 decades. She was an early founding member of En Foco, a pictures workshop turned nonprofit arts business started by a team of photographers who have been also Nuyorican, or Puerto Ricans residing in New York. She is ideal recognized for her Nuyorican portrait series and her radical self-portraiture.
Hurwitz fulfilled Rivera at Orchard Beach in the Bronx in 1961. “She had a camera when we fulfilled she took some shots, but she worked as a tummy dancer at the time,” he said. When she realized that stomach dancing wasn’t likely to be her comprehensive-time job, she segued into photography.
“Photography gripped her,” Hurwitz reported. “She began using pics of anything, the community. She was my spouse, but she was unbelievably talented also. She labored seriously challenging at it. She was a good citizen, good artist, and we loved every single other.”
Today, Rivera’s perform is in museums including the Smithsonian and the Brooklyn Museum, galleries, and private collections all over the earth. Rivera also practiced street images, getting pictures of Latino citizens and neighbors in her Morningside Heights neighborhood. As a road photographer, she was eclectic and unbiased. She could also be important of her friends in the images earth, lots of of them white men.
