New York City in the late 1970s was a collection of villages with its downtown scene, midtown workers, and uptown elegance. It was also a city that was more integrated than ever before, or ever would be again. All of the city’s humanity met in its streets with layered soundtracks of salsa, rock, disco, reggae, and soon hip-hop booming for all to groove to.
But, New York City was also a place of chaos and mayhem. Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy with rampant crime, it was the city’s drug users, dealers, pimps, and sex workers who ruled the streets of Manhattan. 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 New York City 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. Losing his first camera and lens in a classic ’70s New York stabbing and mugging, Rodriguez’s wounds healed, and he armed himself with a new camera to document what he saw on the job: sex workers getting off their shifts, cross-dresser and S&M partiers doin’ it in the back seat, or somehow pulling off an unlikely costume change from bondage gear to emerge from the cab clean-cut in an oxford and khakis—ready to face unwitting family and friends.
A humanist at heart, his photographs speak of the dignity of the city’s working class and those struggling to get by from all the boroughs.
Artist Bios
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Joseph Rodriguez
Joseph Rodríguez is a documentary photographer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He studied photography at the School of Visual Arts and in the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Program at the International Center of Photography in New York City.
Recent exhibitions of his work have appeared at Galleri Kontrast in Stockholm, Sweden; the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Fototeca in Havana, Cuba; the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Alabama; the Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls in New York; the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center; and the Kari Kenneti Gallery in Helsinki, Finland.
In 2001, the Juvenile Justice website, featuring Joseph Rodríguez’s photographs, launched in partnership with the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival High School Pilot Program.
Joseph teaches classes at New York University, the International Center of Photography in New York, and universities in Mexico and Europe.
Rodríguez won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1993 photographing gang families in East Los Angeles.
Organizations
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First Street Green (FSG)
Since 2008, First Street Green (FSG) has converted a derelict building lot at 33 East 1st Street in Manhattan into an open art space and garden serving the Lower East Side community. Working with NYC Parks and Partnership for Parks, FSG has successfully incorporated the lot into First Park. After collaborating with the BMW Guggenheim Lab in 2010 to hold a series of visioning workshops with the community, FSG launched its first season of cultural programming on Earth Day in 2011 with a public sculpture.
Today, FSG provides ongoing cultural activity in First Park by engaging with artists, the community, and cultural groups through a series of programs that activate this public space. Each year, volunteers and artists gather to host events, art workshops, and continue with the park’s stewardship and beautification efforts. To date, FSG has hosted more than 300 events in the park, and is looking to provide a community resource even further going forward.
Taxi Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987
Featuring: Joseph Rodriguez
Curated by: Andy Outis
Supported by:
Locations
View Location Details First Street Green Cultural Park33 E 1st St,
New York,
NY 10003
Location open 24 hours
This book Taxi Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987 was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Related Events
Walking Tour Of Taxi: Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987, With Joseph Rodriguez
Grab your morning coffee and come join legendary photographer Joseph Rodriguez as he shares his memories and stories behind the images in his exhibition and book “Taxi: Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987,” a collection of snapshots that are on display along the fence of First Street Green Cultural Park on Houston Street.
Learn More10 Under 10
Photoville’s 10 Under 10 featuring presentations from The New York Times, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Abrons Arts Center, Magnum Foundation, Pulitzer Center, Indigenous Photo, United Nations Women, Joseph Rodriguez, The Darkroom Masters, and National Geographic featuring live music from Carnegie Hall’s Lullaby Project.
Learn More