ZEKE Magazine: Fall 2021, Interview with Joseph Rodriguez

ZEKEFALL 2021 VOL.7/NO.2 $15 US
THE MAGAZINE OF GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY
FEATURED ARTICLES
AWAKE IN THE DESERT LAND
Photographs by Sofia Aldinio
PATH AWAY
Photographs by Nicolò Filippo Rosso
FROM TULSA TO MINNEAPOLIS
Photographs by 27 Black photographers documenting
this extraordinary time in American history
THE EMPTYING OF THE ANDES
Photographs by Emiliano Pinnizzotto
INTERVIEW WITH JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ
by Caterina Clerici
Published by Social Documentary ZEKE FALL Network 2021/ 1

Interview
JOSEPH RODRIGUEZ
Joseph Rodriguez is a New York-based photographer
whose career spans over 25 years. His
work has been published in National Geographic,
The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones,
Newsweek, New York Magazine and others. He
teaches at NYU and the International Center
for Photography (ICP), among others, and has
published several books including, more recently:
Taxi: A Journey Through My Window 1977-1987
and LAPD 1994. Below is an excerpt from our
conversation, edited for clarity.
By Caterina Clerici
Caterina Clerici: Can you tell us about
your background and how you got
started in photography?
and then dropped out and then got into
the drug scene, started doing heroin,
selling heroin, all that bad boy stuff. I
went to Rikers Island. First time I went in, I
was 17 years old. The second time I was
20, and I was a much tougher guy than
when I first went in. Rikers Island is not
a place that I can even describe to you.
How horrible that place is, that’s a whole
other story.
However, I came out at a very interesting
time because I felt the need to change
and those were the times of affirmative
action, the only way for most young people
to go to college without the ugly bank
loans we have today. Through education
I got myself together: got off methadone
at 26, got my GED and studied graphic
arts technology at the New York City
Technical College in downtown Brooklyn.
In 1980, I came out of school — first one
to go to college in my family — and got
a job in the printing business. You would
send us your chromes, and we would
make negatives, make plates and put
them on a printing press. I learned a lot
about color and printing and that helped
my photography later on.
I was making a lot of money in ‘80,
‘81, doing all those big ads you see
on the front pages of magazines, but I
found myself going back down a rabbit
hole, working 50, 60 hours a week. It
was a great experience, but I was really
unhappy. So I quit my job. My mother
was very upset. I went back to driving
a cab (taking photos that made up Taxi:
Journey Through My Windows 1977-
1987) and worked with a friend who had
a truck and an art moving business.
One day we delivered to a gallery in
Soho where Larry Clark was laying his
whole life’s work up on the wall. I went
up to him as if he was Jimi Hendrix, like,
“Oh, man! I really want to do what you
do!” and he said: “Just go make pictures.”
That’s all he said to me.
I went to ICP and started assisting in
the dark room, cleaning up the cibachrome
lab. Then they gave me a scholarship
and my life changed. I was schooled
by some of the greatest Magnum photographers:
Gilles Peress, Susan Meiselas,
Eugene Richards, Alex Webb, Raymond
Depardon, Sebastiao Salgado. The way
I work is the way they work. For weeks,
months and years. Anything personal is
going to take me years. I’m just coming
off following Mexican migrants throughout
the USA for 10 years.
I think about photography in time, and
I always felt great work takes a lot of it.
And, for me, it was always self-initiated.
There were no editors, no one telling me
Joseph Rodriguez: I was born and
raised in Brooklyn in 1951. I grew up
where I live right now, Park Slope, but it
was South Brooklyn then. And you know,
the Italian American history in New York
was very strong. It was a very mafioso
neighborhood and I’m not lying — we
had the Gowanus Canal and it was not
unusual for us to see floating bodies… It
was pretty much like the old Sicilian way.
In my Catholic school there were
only about 400 or 500 of us. There was
one Black kid and one Puerto Rican kid:
me. The other kids were all mostly from
Genoa, in Italy. Every single parent who
lived close by used to grow grapes in
the backyard and you would stop by to
try their wine. It was very old school.
But then the drugs came, and that’s what
brought a lot of the same problems you
have in so many other places.
I lost my way… got into high school
A young 18th Street Gang member being arrested. At the time this photo was taken the ATF (Arms Tobacco and
Firearms) were working with LAPD to try and take down one of the most notorious gangs in Los Angeles. The aim
was also to get as many guns off the streets as possible. Photo by Joseph Rodriguez from LAPD 1994.
2 / ZEKE FALL 2021

what to do. We just had that practice,
that discipline, which also brings a lot
of anxiety because you’re swimming
upstream and you’re always alone. The
practice is mapping out a story, which
then turns into something longer — like
when I went to LA in 1992 to photograph
gangs and I’m still revisiting that project
some 20 years later.
CC: Can you tell us how your project
on gang violence in LA started, how it
evolved, and the challenges you faced?
JR: When the Rodney King uprising
happened, immediately I wanted to
go, because I was missing America
(Rodriguez was living in Europe at the
time) and I understand the urban narrative,
no matter which city it is — Chicago,
Miami, New York, LA. I couldn’t do much
research while I was living in Europe,
because it wasn’t like now where everything’s
online, but one thing I did was listen
to music: all this gangsta rap, Eazy-E,
Tupac, Dre, N.W.A., Public Enemy. The
rhymes they were spitting out were the
newspapers of the streets. So I was listening
to guys like this Chicano rapper Kid
Frost, who’s totally East LA, and I was like
“Ok, I gotta go there.”
I flew in the middle of the night from
Stockholm to LA and arrived in my hotel
room. I didn’t know where I was going,
I had no connections and LA is huge!
So I grabbed three newspapers, turned
on the news and of course there was a
funeral and a drive-by shooting every
minute.
There was a lot of ground to cover,
so I stayed five weeks and worked
really hard. No sleep, just worked and
drove around, from one neighborhood
to another, also with the cops doing the
gang unit. But I knew our history already.
I began interviewing African-American
families in Watts, asking what was the
difference with the riots in 1965, in the
era when Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy
were assassinated and there was a lot
of city streets burning. The conversation
began and it opened up doors, and I
realized I wasn’t interested in just the
guns or the people dying. This was a
generational story that went back three or
Waiting for a fare outside 220 West Houston Street, an after-after-hours club. New York 1984. Photo by Joseph
Rodriguez from Taxi: A Journey Through My Window 1977-1987.
four generations. That’s when I really felt
the power of this story.
I went back to Stockholm and we published
what we could. I applied for an artist
grant there, and then I moved to LA in
September of ‘92. It was hard, I had left
the kids behind and just kept flying back,
trying not to be the absentee father that I
was. But that was the path I was on.
The gang project was very hard to
do and I paid the psychological price
for it, in terms of PTSD. At least eleven
kids are dead, in the East Side Stories:
Gang Life in East L.A. book. Children
were dying and parents were telling me
I needed to tell this story. Plus, sometimes
people thought I was an undercover cop.
I showed them my Spanish Harlem book
and my National Geographic stories to
prove that I wasn’t a cop, but paranoia
runs deep in the hood. That hung over my
head for a while — until the book was
published — and I was going to quit the
project, I felt I couldn’t handle it.
I also had guys come say to me: “Yo,
man, I’m about to go do a hit, you can
come and just take pictures.” This is ethics.
I said: “Look, I go with you, I photograph
you doing this scene. Detectives
come, they find out who’s who, they
take my film and they use the evidence
against you.” Some of the gang members
were 16 years old; they didn’t know how
the law worked. They didn’t understand
what a camera could do. They were so
enamored by their vanity and Hollywood
influence. With a camera comes a lot of
responsibility.
CC: How did your surroundings while
growing up influence your practice and
your understanding of photography, as
well as your mission as a “humanist”, as
you often define yourself?
JR: I grew up with my mother and her
sisters, and there were no men in my family.
My stepfather was a dope fiend who
died on the streets. There were a lot of
not nice things growing up, and that was
very tough for me.
One thing I remember is that my mom
would sit with her sisters in a very old
school, Italian way, they would have their
coffee and talk about the men. I would
hear these stories — it was unbelievable
— of abuse and cheating, and those references
helped me develop a feminine eye.
I’m always asking myself: “Why did
this photographer go photograph a gangster
with guns, bullets and drugs, but then
didn’t photograph a mother at the same
time, or the struggling parent?” That’s
always been very important in my work. I
didn’t always go for the guns.
“Raised in violence, I enacted my own
violence upon the world and upon myself.
What saved me was the camera, its ability
to gaze upon, to focus, to investigate,
to reclaim, to resist, to re-envision.” That
quote is from my journal. That’s how I
got here, that’s where this goal comes
from. That’s why I went back for East Side
Stories (Rodriguez’s long-term project
about gang violence in LA, shot between
1992–2017.)
Continued on page 70.
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 3

A COMPELLING AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL
COMMENTARY BY KEITH FLYNN & CHARTER WEEKS
Both the Great Recession that began
in 2008 and the more recent global
pandemic provide the backdrop
for these remarkable portraits and
testimonies of the people who do
their best to survive with the odds
stacked against them.
- Glenn Ruga
Social Documentary Network
Featuring Photographs
by Charter Weeks and
Text by Keith Flynn
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Joseph Rodriguez
Continued from page 53.
CC: With regard to the ongoing conversation
about minorities and underrepresented
communities reclaiming ownership
of the narrative in the media, what do
you think is the value of having someone
from inside a community documenting
it, as opposed to someone from outside?
How do you see social media affecting
the process?
JR: I remember people used to tell me:
“You’re not gonna make any money
shooting Black and brown people.” That
was racist. I had to let it roll off my back
and say, “Okay, we’ll get there.”
When National Geographic published
“Growing up in East Harlem” in May
1990, it was a cover story, World Press
Photo-winning, all these awards, 26
pages. It was the proudest day of my life
when it was published: I was in Spanish
Harlem at the library with my magazine,
and these little chavelitos (young kids)
were reading it being like “Wow! This is
my neighborhood!”
Some time later, several of the editors
at the magazine told me they felt they
should not be doing stories about poverty
in America. And I said to myself: “Wait
a minute, you mean to tell me I can go to
Ethiopia and show bare breasted, starving
women and that’s okay?” After doing
another story in Africa I chose not to
work for them. All of a sudden, 10 years
ago they’re going back and looking at
many of their stories through a colonialist
lens, 'cause now it’s the 21st century
and everybody calls you up on social
networks.
Social media has given many people
a voice. I put a lot of my work there
because the younger generations don’t
read, they don’t go to libraries or look at
books. Social media is giving a platform
for many of us to see and read.
There’s one thing I want to make clear
though: just because I’m Latino, I’m a
photographer who happens to be Latino,
I’m not a Latino photographer. That’s not
how I label myself.
Ethnicity should not have to do with
what you represent — although that’s
shifted, and there’s a lot of Black folks out
there that are pushing the Black narrative,
a lot of Latinos pushing the Latino narrative,
a lot of women pushing the women
narrative, a lot of trans folks pushing the
trans narrative. Everybody’s out there trying
to do something, and that’s okay. But
it’s very easy to get pigeonholed like in my
case: “Hire Joe, he’ll shoot AIDS. He’ll do
drug addicts, dope fiends and gangsters.”
I don’t look at what color or gender
you are. I don’t care where you come
from, what your class status is. If you’re
putting the time in, if you’re willing to
listen, you can do good work. I don’t like
the way the conversations are going right
now where, “Oh, you’re white, you’re
not allowed to do this project,” or “You’re
Black, you’re not allowed to do that
project.” Photography has always been
universal, as far as I’m concerned.
4 / ZEKE FALL 2021

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Contents of Fall 2021 Issue
Awake in the Desert Land
Photographs by Sofia Aldinio
Path Away
Photographs by Nicolò Filippo Rosso
From Tulsa to Minneapolis: Photographing the
Long Road to Justice
Photographs by 27 Black photographers documenting this
extraordinary time in American history
The Emptying of the Andes
Photographs by Emiliano Pinnizzotto
Migration from the Northern Triangle
by Daniela Cohen
Interview with Joseph Rodriguez
by Caterina Clerici
Photography & Social Change
by Emily Schiffer
Book Reviews
Edited by Michelle Bogre
ZEKE FALL 2021/ 5