Manuel Rivera-Ortiz

Manuel Rivera -Ortiz ( born December 23, 1968 in Pozo Hondo, Guayama, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican - American photographer, known for his documentary photographs of people's living conditions in less developed countries.

Life

Rivera -Ortiz was born into a very poor family in the hamlet of Pozo Hondo outside the town of Guayama on the southeast coast of Puerto Rico. He grew up with his parents and three siblings, of which he is the eldest in a simple corrugated iron hut with dirt floor and no running water. Later, the family expanded by two step-sisters and four half-siblings. The father was chopping sugar cane in the cane fields of Central machete and Central Aguirre and worked outside the sugarcane harvest time as migrant workers on farms in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. As Rivera -Ortiz was eleven years old, his parents divorced and his father moved with the children on American mainland to Holyoke, Massachusetts. The separation from his mother, whom he has never been seen again, has marked him for life. Despite his Spanish mother tongue and the fact a word of English that he spoke with his move to the United States, concluded Rivera -Ortiz 1995 "cum laude" with a master's in English at Nazareth College and received in 1998 a Master 's Degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He then worked as a journalist for newspapers and magazines (including Elle, Democrat and Chronicle). He soon turned to photojournalism and documentary photography. Since 2000 he has worked as a freelance photographer with a focus on social criticism. Rivera -Ortiz lives alternately in Rochester, New York and Zurich.

Work

Rivera -Ortiz is one of the socially engaged photographers in the tradition of social documentary photography. He is known for his documentation of living conditions of people in the Third World. Our focus is on him human subjects and the humanistic concerns in a clear, direct imagery reports on socially disadvantaged groups to deliver. He hereby rejects the " lurid " from photojournalism and avoids pretentious imagery. Rivera -Ortiz ' images can the viewer because of its directness, simplicity, and because they show things as they really are, shock initially. The photographer wants the mugged man but not hurt their dignity. He joins a long gallery socially critical photographers such as Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and W. Eugene Smith and stores unobtrusively his " photographic finger " into the wounds of society. Rivera- Ortiz's work is represented in numerous museum collections, including the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film and the Kunstmuseum Bern. In 2004 he received the " En Foco 's New Works Photography Award " and the 2007 " Artist of the Year Award from the Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester ."

Rivera -Ortiz documented the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in Shanksville for the French organizations Photographie.com and 24h.com.

2012 tribute to the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Rivera- Ortiz's work as one of the 50 best works ( 50 Great Stories ) former graduates in the last 100 years.

Rivera -Ortiz is committed to ensuring that increasingly non-white photographers document the living conditions in the Third World. To this end, he founded the The Manuel Rivera -Ortiz Foundation for International Photography.

In his photographs succeeds Rivera -Ortiz to resolve the apparent contradiction between the documentary and the artistic value of a photograph, so that his photographs have received side by side with the art of photography an accepted place in galleries and museums.

Reception

" Flair and distinctive in Rivera- Ortiz's photographs is their deep humanity. The heart feels it. And Rivera- Ortiz's heart tells him to, on a street corner in a remote village within the Specific Terms to recognize. From the countryside he forms a sight, the sky, a river, spices roadside, mother and child, a man with no arms. Manuel Rivera -Ortiz enables us to travel with him and to see what is not readily apparent to the human eye. It goes beyond the documentation simple truths. He has the courage to learn it first as his own and then bring the rest of us home - to open a compelling invitation to our own hearts " ( Susana Tubert, Executive Producer & Co -Founder of TeatroStageFest, Manhattan ).

Romanticize " Manuel Rivera -Ortiz ' photographs of people living in poverty in villages in Bolivia, India, Thailand and Turkey, neither the poverty of the people portrayed, nor do they explicitly criticize the political or economic systems that create such conditions. By completely focused on the people who live in poor global villages that he visited, he captures the entire spectrum of human emotions: distrust, fear, curiosity, friendliness, happiness. Social criticism shimmers beneath the surface of his work through, but the main message of Rivera -Ortiz ' images seems to be that hope and creativity are not mutually exclusive of poverty. " ( Nick Stillman, Editor, " Current ", New York Foundation for the Arts)

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2008, Swiss Re, Zurich, Switzerland
  • 2007 Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY
  • 2007 William Whipple Art Gallery, Southwest Minnesota State University, Marshall, MN
  • 2007 Columbia University Joseph Pulitzer Graduate School of Journalism, New York, NY
  • 2007 El Museo Francisco Oller y Diego Rivera, Buffalo, NY
  • 2004 Link Gallery, City Hall, Rochester, NY
  • 2004 Weitmann Gallery, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Group Exhibitions

Publications

  • Percepciones en Blanco & Negro - Colombia, Ediciones Adéer Lyinad 2009
  • Voices in first person, Simon & Schuster, 2008, ISBN 1-4169-8445-3
  • A Journey of Self- Discovery, Range Finder Magazine article in PDF Online
  • Christa Glennie Seychew: An Interview with Photographer Manuel Rivera- Ortiz. In: Buffalo Rising. (online)
Museum of Fine Arts Berne Shanksville, Pennsylvania The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film Credit Suisse
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