Photo & Imaging faculty member Joseph Rodriguez has recently published two monographs.
TAXI, now available from powerHouse Books is a document of Rodriguez's time spent as a taxi driver in 1970's New York. A 2017 NY Magazine feature on the same body of work brought widespread critical acclaim.
"The grittiness of the city was a beacon and a promise to many outsiders, those who didn't quite fit into any mold, and a vibrant LGBTQ community became the nexus of an underworld of sex workers who liked to party. For a NYC cabbie such as Joseph Rodriguez, the hot spots to pick up fares were clubs like the Hellfire, Mineshaft, The Anvil, The Vault, and Show World.
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A humanist at heart, his photographs speak of the dignity of the city's working class from all the boroughs and those struggling to get by."
LAPD: 1994, published by The Artist Edition, chronicles a long-term embedded assignment in the LAPD. Rodriguez was given broad access to document the department in the wake of the Rodney King uprisings, part of an effort to increase transparency.
"In 2020, the year of Black Lives Matter, a generation after these photos were taken, new uprisings demand reform yet again and the same questions about policing – what are they for, who do they serve, and who do they protect – shape the public discussion.
The photos in LAPD 1994 display the subjectivity of Joseph Rodriguez as much as that of the cops and the civilians, who are the victims and sometimes perpetrators of violence – he is not afraid to humanise the cops, but the images also shows the darker side of both the officers and the people they are sworn to protect."