What Hiram Maristany Saw Looking Through The Lens At El Barrio
Photographer Hiram Maristany has spent more than 50 years documenting the Puerto Rican community in New York City's East Harlem neighborhood — through poverty, beauty and gentrification.
Photographer Hiram Maristany first picked up a camera as a teenager in 1959 at the urging of a social worker named Dan Murrow. He used it to document his world in El Barrio — or East Harlem — a close and vibrant Puerto Rican community that regularly dealt with poverty and violence. His photographs show metaphors for hope in scenes of everyday life, without glossing over the grit.
But unless you closely follow the Puerto Rican Arts Movement or go to a lot of art shows in East Harlem, you
