Legacy Lab: Archive Edition brings together works from En Foco’s archive and permanent collection alongside family photographs, personal archives, and newly created artworks by Bronx community members who participated in the Legacy Lab workshop series. Featuring archival artists spanning En Foco’s five-decade history, the exhibition highlights the enduring impact of their work while exploring how everyday images and creative practices become powerful vessels of cultural memory.

Founded in 1974, En Foco has spent more than five decades supporting photographers of color while preserving the visual histories of our communities. This exhibition extends that mission by positioning the archive not as a static repository, but as a living, evolving resource shaped by the people who create, preserve, and reinterpret it.

The Legacy Lab invites viewers to consider how images move across generations and how personal photographs can transform into shared histories. By placing community archives in conversation with works from En Foco’s collection, the exhibition demonstrates how collective storytelling can illuminate overlooked narratives, strengthen cultural continuity, and ensure these histories remain visible for the future.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Gilbert Acevedo: Gilbert Acevedo is a New York–born Puerto Rican photographer and printer who has spent much of his career working in the photographic darkroom. Trained in traditional black-and-white printing, he worked for professional labs including Modernage and Portogallo. Through his work as both photographer and printer, Acevedo has remained deeply committed to the craft of analog photography and the expressive possibilities of the darkroom. His photographs and projects have been shown in venues in Puerto Rico, Mexico, San Francisco, and New York.

Danny Aros: Darry Aros is an immigrant artist from Colombia whose work often explores belonging, queerness, and memory, subjects that echo his own experience of cultural transition. He wrote, “I created this collage using my family archive, reflecting our first days in America and honoring my great aunt, the first to settle in the US. The yellow American flag, from an ongoing work, replaces the flag’s white spaces to represent immigrants from the nations that once formed Gran Colombia, questioning the dollar-driven ideal of the American Dream. Applying these methods outside of traditional photography to my family’s archive has deepened my connection to my work. The tactile act of transferring and recontextualizing images has become a way to process memory, expand my visual language, and better understand myself as an artist.”

Yeline Del Carmen: Yeline Del Carmen is a visual artist based in The Bronx, New York. Her works explore abstract shapes and intuitive mark-making through digital drawings, painting on canvas, wood panels, tote bags, and, most recently, embroidery. When creating, she relies on her instincts and materials to guide the process. Often inspired by play, experimentation, and an obsessive accumulation of elements, Yeline’s pieces aim to create energetic landscapes filled with texture, bold colors, and whimsical biomorphic shapes. For the En Foco Legacy Lab series, she focused on highlighting birthdays of family members. Birthdays have always been a very special tradition in Yeline’s family, both here in New York City and back home in the Dominican Republic. It’s a time of celebration, quality time with loved ones, dancing, and of course, lots of cake!

Gerald Cyrus: Gerald Cyrus was born in 1957 in Los Angeles, CA, and began photographing there in 1984. In 1990, he moved to New York City and obtained an MFA from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 1992. While at SVA, he also interned at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture under the supervision of Deborah Willis. During his time in New York, Cyrus photographed regularly on the streets of Manhattan, Harlem, and Brooklyn, and in 1994, he started frequenting the nightclubs in Harlem and photographed the vibrant music scene in that historic neighborhood for over six years. The resulting body of work, entitled Stormy Monday, was published as a book in 2008. In 2000, Cyrus moved to Philadelphia, PA, and began photographing in that city as well as the nearby city of Camden, NJ. He has also photographed extensively in Bahia, Brazil, where he was a fellow at the Sacatar Foundation, and in New Orleans, LA (before and after Hurricane Katrina), where he has family history. Cyrus currently lives in Philadelphia and teaches part-time at Haverford College. He is also a member of the Kamoinge, Inc. photographers’ collective.

Lola Flash: Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than four decades, photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. An active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 “Kissing Doesn’t Kill” poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a lifelong commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide. Flash has work included in important collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MoMA, the Whitney, the Museum of the African American of History and Culture, and the Brooklyn Museum. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective and on the Board of Queer Art. Flash received their bachelor’s degree from the Maryland Institute and master’s from the London College of Printing, in the UK. Flash works primarily in portraiture, engaging those who are often deemed invisible. Flash’s practice is firmly rooted in social justice advocacy around sexual, racial, and cultural difference.

George Malave: Born in Puerto Rico in 1946 and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, photographer George Malave has documented New York City and its communities for more than five decades. After discovering photography in his early twenties, he studied at the Germain School of Photography and the Educational Alliance Photo Workshop under Dr. Al Freed, later earning a degree in photography from SUNY. Malave’s work explores themes of urban life, community, and human experience, with projects ranging from New York street life and the Myrtle and Third Avenue elevated transit lines to the World Trade Center before and after 9/11. He has received a Creative Artists Public Service Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Survey Grant. His work has been exhibited widely, including at the International Center of Photography, the Museum of the City of New York, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Museo de Puerto Rico. His photographs are also held in the collection of the New York Public Library.

Evelyn Martinez: Evelyn Martinez (she/her) is a Mexican American portrait photographer, jewelry artist, and creative consultant born and raised in The Bronx. Her art is rooted in joy, memory, and intergenerational connection. Her series De Origen a Destino draws from her family photo archives to honor her parents, Tere and Toño, who first built a life for themselves and later for her and her sisters. Through this selection of images, Evelyn reflects on her experiences growing up Mexican American and on how family photos preserve love, history, and resilience. As we look toward the future of our communities, it becomes vital to remember how consequential our small histories are to the broader story of New York City and this country. Legacy Lab provided Evelyn the space and time to not only reconnect with memories but also to recenter familial storytelling.

Frank X. Méndez: Frank X. Méndez has been photographing the people and landscapes of Puerto Rico for over three decades. Working exclusively in black and white and using natural light, he devotes his free time to long-term photography projects. Méndez, a Puerto Rican photographer, was born in New York City in 1937. After completing high school, he enlisted in the US Marine Corps, where he served until he was medically discharged in 1957. With the aid of the Veterans Administration, Méndez attended Parsons School of Design in New York, receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Photography in 1966. In 1976, he received a New York State CAPS fellowship grant, and the following year moved to Puerto Rico where he still resides to this day. Méndez’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Museo de Arte de San Juan, the Museo de Las Américas, Galería Botello, and Plaza Las Américas in Puerto Rico; an En Foco exhibition at Hostos Art Gallery and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, both in the Bronx; El Museo del Barrio, in New York; and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

groana melendez (they/them) is a lens-based artist raised between New York City and Santo Domingo. Their work explores hybrid identities through self-representation. They hold an MFA in Advanced Photographic Studies from the International Center of Photography-Bard Program and have been part of residencies at Proyecto Ace, Diaspora Vibe Arts Incubator, and ARC Athens. They are included in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, the Library of Congress, and En Foco, Inc. groana has had solo shows at the New York Public Library, CUNY, and ICP-Bard’s studio in Queens. They have been included in group shows at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the Latinx Project at NYU, BRIC Arts, and El Museo del Barrio’s La Trienal 20/21, the museum’s first national large-scale survey of Latinx contemporary art. They work and live in the Bronx in New York City.

Delilah Montoya: Delilah Montoya is a Chicana artist whose work explores the layered cultural histories of the Southwest and US–Mexico borderlands. Born in Texas and raised in the Midwest, Montoya later settled in New Mexico, the ancestral homeland of her mother’s family. Drawing from the mestizo/a experience of the region, her work brings together Aztec Mexican, Spanish, Native American, and contemporary cultural traditions. Working across photography, printmaking, installation, and digital media, Montoya challenges stereotypes and the “documentary gaze” historically directed at Mesoamerican communities. Her projects frequently engage spiritual iconography, folklore, and cultural memory to examine identity and power. Montoya has exhibited internationally since the 1980s. Her work is held in major collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum; LACMA; the New Mexico Museum of Art; the Bronx Museum of the Arts; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Alexis Marie Montoya: Alexis Marie Montoya is a Puerto Rican and Peruvian multidisciplinary artist and food writer born, raised, and based in The Bronx. Her work examines the intersection of food and culture, especially within the Bronx and Latinx communities. Alexis is a former line cook, food educator, and organizer who leans on her experience to inform her artistic practice. Alexis earned a bachelor’s degree in Advertising and Public Relations and a minor in Visual Culture from the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 2023, she was a BronxArtSpace Governors Island Artist-in-Residence. She has exhibited work at BronxArtSpace, Bronx River Art Center (BRAC), Casita Maria Gallery, and WallWorks New York. Her artwork and food writing can be seen across publications like Bon Appétit, Edible Bronx, and more.

Dulce Pinzon: Dulce Pinzón, born 1974 in Mexico City, is a photographer whose work explores migration, labor, and cultural identity between Mexico and the United States. She studied Mass Media Communications at Universidad de las Américas in Puebla and photography at Indiana University of Pennsylvania before moving to New York in 1995 to study at the International Center of Photography. Pinzón’s work has been exhibited and published internationally and is widely recognized for its thoughtful engagement with social and political themes. Her celebrated series The Real Story of the Superheroes highlights immigrant workers in New York, honoring their often unseen contributions to the city. She has received numerous honors, including the Jóvenes Creadores/FONCA grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and the Mexican Biennial of Photography at Centro de la Imagen. Pinzón lives and works between Mexico and New York.

Joshua Poyer: Joshua Poyer is a street and documentary photographer/educator whose work celebrates the authenticity and vibrancy of everyday life. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, Joshua draws profound inspiration from the rich cultural tapestry of his surroundings. As the son of a Puerto Rican mother and a West Indian father, his photography seeks to illuminate the beauty found at the intersections of identity and culture. Joshua began his artistic journey with portraiture, skillfully capturing local artists and creators in moments of creative expression. His current work delves deeper into the relationship between individuals and their passions, offering compelling visual narratives that resonate on a universal level. Joshua’s photography has been featured in a number of group exhibitions, including The Monad Gallery in Brooklyn, The Bronx Documentary Center, and Fujifilm’s PrintLife Photo Exhibit at Grand Central Station in New York City.

Linda Ferrer Rogers: Linda Ferrer Rogers is a photographer associated with exhibitions organized by En Foco in the mid-1970s. Her work appeared in group exhibitions such as Photographer’s Choice and Mujer in 1976, alongside artists documenting the cultural life and communities of New York’s Puerto Rican diaspora. These exhibitions were part of En Foco’s early efforts to create visibility for Latino photographers during a period when their work was largely absent from mainstream institutions. Rogers’s photographs remain preserved within En Foco’s archive and permanent collection, representing an important moment in the emergence of Latino photography in New York.

Sofie Vasquez: Sofie Vasquez is an Ecuadorian artist from The Bronx, New York. Practicing as a documentarian, she creates long-term bodies of work that resonate with the values of preserving specific histories as well as recording new chapters of them. She works primarily as a photographer and experiments with graphic design, filmmaking, alternative process, and writing; all to aid her projects in the way that can best support them. Her work has been featured in The Cut, The Guardian, and The New York Times, as well as exhibited with The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, Photoville, and En Foco, Inc.

Felicia Wilson: Felicia Wilson is a community member who has stated, “I loved looking at photos since I was a child. I kept my mother’s photos and put them into a book that I still have. Through this, I learned that taking pictures to document experiences and remember people was so important. Thank you to my mother and Aunt Frances for saving these. This is dedicated to all the departed family members in these photos. You are never forgotten.”

Legacy Lab: Archive Edition

Featuring: Various Artists

Curated by: Oscar J. Rivera Valarie Irizarry

Locations

View Location Details Download a detailed map of this location Brooklyn Bridge Park – Emily Warren Roebling Plaza

1 Water St
Brooklyn, NY 11201

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The views and opinions expressed in this exhibit are those of the exhibition artists and partners and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Photoville or any other participants and partners of the Photoville Festival.

This exhibition is co-curated by En Foco’s  Managing Director, Oscar Rivera, and Collection and Archives Manager, Valerie Irizarry.

En Foco is supported in part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Additional support is provided by The Mellon Foundation, BronxCare Health System, Joy of Giving Something, Inc., the Philip and Edith Leonian Foundation, Ford Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, Mosaic Network & Fund, Americans for the Arts, and the Aguado-Pavlick Arts Fund.

• #Community
• #Diaspora
• #Family
• #Memory
• #Migration
• #Social Justice
• #Storytelling