General
Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Champion of Latino Photography, Dies at 93
A New Yorker of Puerto Rican descent, he helped start a collective that brought recognition to Hispanic photographers and illuminated life in the city’s barrios.
To Charles Biasiny-Rivera, who worked as a street photographer in the barrios of New York City in the early 1970s, his craft was a matter of trust as much as eye.
“You really do have to understand that when you enter a neighborhood, the neighborhood sees you as a stranger, because they know everybody, so you don’t want to become noticed,” he said in a 2022 video interview. “So you hang out a little bit,” he added, “smoke some cigarettes, say good morning, good afternoon to people.
“If you created a rapport with them,” he said, “they wouldn’t be peering at you all the time. For those peeking from windows, “the shades would go up, the shades would go down.”
As an aspiring photographer of Puerto Rican descent, Mr. Biasiny-Rivera saw street photography as one of the few paths open to him at a time when the handful of Latino photographers he knew were struggling to make a mark in the field. He spent the rest of his career working to change that.
Mr. Biasiny-Rivera died at 93 on Aug. 10 at his home in Olivebridge, N.Y., a hamlet in the Catskill Mountains. His wife, Betty Wilde-Biasiny, said the cause was complications of lung cancer.
