Latino, Hispanic Culture, Arts and Entertianment at BF Cafe

Elias Irizarry Rosado is a photographer you’ll want to get to know, or at least know his work. It would be ridiculous to say his photos say a thousand words because after you read Elias’s story, you’ll see that his photos say so much more. They truly speak to your soul.
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BFC: Where were you born and raised?

I was born in Jacobi hospital in the Bronx. If you get shot above Southern Boulevard the ambulance takes you to Jacobi. My mother always reminds me about rushing to Jacobi after her water broke during a lechon in my grandmother’s backyard. That’s where I was raised; Grandma’s house was the center of the family when I was a kid.


BFC: What was it like growing up the South Bronx?

People have a lot negative things to say about the Bronx and some of them are right but I love it, there’s no place like it. The Bronx was like one big Puerto Rican explosion when I was a kid, we were everywhere and we did everything. Growing up in the Bronx during the 80′s was rough. I learned how to look, listen and shut up very young. There were many distractions back then so I had to be focused in order to stay out of trouble and sometimes trouble just looked for you. Listening to my elders was necessary for my survival, it was either that or learn the hard way like the Puerto Rican refrain “Coje consejo, llegar a viejo”.

The thing that most sticks out to me about growing up in the Bronx was when crack arrived. So many families fell victim to drug abuse and my family was not exempt. My mother struggled with drug addiction for most of my life so I had to learn to depend on myself from a very young age. My father was incarcerated when I was a couple of months old. He was in and out of prison for most of my adolescent life, he would only last a couple of months on the street before going back in. He was a very handsome strong man who didn’t take shit from anyone, kinda looked like Al Pacino in Carlito’s Way with the leather trench. He was also a heroine addict but you would never know it, a real classy dude that you didn’t wanna mess with. He finally came out when I was 14 but by that time he had already contracted HIV and had been positive for a while and back then that was a death sentence. My dad died from AIDS-related complications in the winter of 91. Life without a father was nothing new back then. It seemed like everyone had a father locked up or dead. My parents like so many others were casualties of the war waged on our community.

Making these photos constantly reminds me of my past. But life continues without regard for my own struggles growing up. It’s for this reason that today I photograph, to use the voice I’ve been given to those who like me then, are still living in a struggle today. I’m thankful for life’s lessons. Those years shaped my future in so many ways.


BFC: What was the culture in your home growing up and how did your parents influence your formative years?

Like many boricua families we took great pride in being Puerto Rican. Music and food were a big part of our lives and still is. My great grandmother Maria Teresa held everything together. She taught me how to cook, iron clothes and clean among so many other things. My mother never really made me speak Spanish so I had to develop a way to communicate with my great grandmother. I understood everything but I was scared to speak it when I was a kid. She would take me with her to the welfare office and other appointments so that I could translate with my ten year old Spanglish and she always understood me, which was the funny part. I think growing up with very little definitely caused me not to take anything for granted. It made me appreciate the little things and kept me humble.



BFC: How did you discover your passion for the arts?

I studied photography as a kid in my 6th grade art class. My art teacher gave me a quick intro course and put a camera in my hand. He took the class out around the block to shoot some rolls and developed our film in time for the next class. I felt so cool with that old heavy camera around my skinny neck. I immediately fell in love with photography that summer but I knew it would be a long time before I would be able to have a camera of my own given my current financial situation which was called poor. It wasn’t until I got in my twenties that I finally got serious about it.


BFC: Do you remember the moment you took your first photo and knew you had found your medium?

Yes, when I was about 26 years old I was walking on 104th. Street in east Harlem with my camera and saw an old Puerto Rican community center that had been closed for some time. The front of the building was covered with Puerto Rican art still colorful after many years of abandonment. My photograph of that building changed the way I felt about photography. I saw a street full of countless stories and a building that once helped many families and kids, both forgotten like the shopping cart and toilet bowl in the garbage outside the center. It made me feel like I was there in the gutter. From that point I knew I had found what I’m supposed to do.


BFC: Your photos are amazing pieces of storytelling. Can you tell us about your process on how you find your subject matter?

My subjects are regular people living life. Many of the people I’ve photographed remind me of my family and I can relate to all of them. I truly believe blacks and Latinos are the most beautiful and interesting group of people in the world so I go where they are. A lot of it has to do with being in the right place and having patience. My teacher once told me, a photographer is like a bacalao who lays a thousand eggs and only a few survive. That saying is so true. Finding the right moment, the right subject isn’t easy so you have to be patient. Sometimes great shots are by accident. I took a photo of an old woman looking out her window in East Harlem. When I saw her our eyes met and I asked her if I could photograph her, she nodded yes with a smile. When I got home and pulled up the photo and I felt like I was looking at my great grandmother. There were so many things in the shot that I didn’t notice when I took it. The woman had bata on with small flowers and she had made flowerpots out of country crock containers in the window behind her small stickers of Santa Barbara. I realized that being there, right in the middle of it was where I needed to be. I later returned to the old woman and gave her a framed copy of the photo that she proudly displays on her wall for her family to see.


BFC: What do you look to convey or achieve with or through photos?

I want the viewer to almost smell the street when they see my photos and I think I’ve achieved that in many cases. The faces of my subjects show a celebration of life through struggle and profound humanity. I never use Photoshop. My photo editing is strictly limited to cropping and are always as is. I don’t want to make a photo better on my computer. Instead I want to take a great photo. I want to show the viewer what actually happened, who was actually there without any distortion. I want to show the reality of black and Latino life, as it is, raw and uncut.


BFC: Why do you shoot photos in the barrio?

The barrio and other black and brown communities in NYC are full of life, real life. These communities are full of survivors from the old timers to the youngsters, everyone is struggling to maintain and it’s been this way since blacks and Latinos arrived. Puerto Ricans in particular have had to endure so many attacks on our families and communities yet we maintain our pride and identity. This is why I shoot in the hood, to show the beauty of my people. There are lots of photographers that go out into low-income neighborhoods to shoot our people in despair and honestly I’m tired of that sort of stuff. Photos like that don’t show how strong and resilient we are as a people. They don’t show the love we have for our family or our determination to rise above our despair. I’ll never underestimate the power of photography.


BFC: What makes black and white photos so appealing to you?

I learned photography using black and white film. I think the absence of color in photography forces the eye to look a little deeper. They are simple and to the point. They preserve the artistic value of the mood and the message. Some say we dream in black and white, if this is true than black and white photography may appeal to us on a very deep level. For me, when I see a photo in my head it’s in black and white. Photography is all about light. The word photography is Greek for “writing with light” and nothing captures light in a photo better than black and white.


BFC: What makes a photo a great one from a good one?

This question has a million answers so I can only offer my opinion. I think it’s all about Impact. A brilliant photo without an impactful subject matter is just boring, to me anyway. Granted what is impactful to one person may be less so to someone else but there is still a universal appeal to it. I think a great photo stays with you, it changes the way you see or think. The good photos are the ones you might admire but soon forget.


BFC: What is a documentary photo?

The definition of a documentary photo is somewhat hard to pin down. Generally we think of documentary photography as having a connection to a real situation and the attempt to represent the situation should be made with minimal distortion. Even though we think of photographs as honest evidence, they can and do lie in many ways. Walker Evans said that the term should be “documentary-style” photography, because it was really meant to be art, where true “documentary photography” would be photographs that served a function. I consider my photos to be documentary style, true but art at the same time.


BFC: Is there one photo that you will always remember because of the people or your experience in taking the photo?

I met a man by the name of Chocolate. He is a black Puerto Rican from the town of Loiza, Puerto Rico who moved to el barrio 52 years ago with his wife. Chocolate has been a musician all of his life and for many years has congregated with local residents on the corner of 108th. St. & Lex where they jam with various percussion instruments on hot summer days. Chocolate and his wife are like humble neighborhood celebrities. He makes sure everyone who passes by hears his drums beating while his wife sells frituras and plates of food. When my wife and I stumbled on Chocolate for the fist time I had been shooting in the area. He immediately welcomed us to take part in his corner orchestra. We ate some alcapurias and drank some rum together while he told me his story. My wife and I stood with Chocolate for the rest of day on that corner watching people stop by on their way home from work or on the way to the store to dance a couple of steps with him. I’ll never forget Chocolate and his wife for being so welcoming to everyone who passed him. The photos I took of him and his band of rhumberos showed exactly what I just explained, harmony and love on a dingy street corner.


BFC: What are your plans for the future in photography?

There are lots of stories that need to be told in our communities and sadly many of them don’t get any attention. Going forward, my work will mainly be focused on photo essays and documentary pieces. I’m also in the process of creating a free photography program for kids and young adults who come from low-income communities and families in NYC. Photography gave me a voice when I thought I didn’t have one. I’m determined to give other kids the same opportunity that was given to me at no cost to them. At the moment I’m dealing with getting funding for the program but I feel confident about the program.

Getting rich off of my photography would be nice, I cannot lie about that but it isn’t what drives me to do it. Changing lives is the only true legacy you leave behind and that’s my plan.

[Photo above - description by Elias: Melody Velez and her father was my brother in law, Jose M. Velez. He was the 36th New Yorker to die in Iraq. When he died I decided to start a series on the effects of losing a parent from the war.]

To view more photos of Elias’s children photos see BF Cafe Art Gallery

Visit Elias’s website: shownd.com/Machete

PM 04/10