En Foco

En Foco is a non-profit organization that nurtures contemporary fine art and documentary photographers of diverse cultures, primarily U.S. residents of Latino, African and Asian heritage, and native peoples of the Americas and the Pacific.

Founded in 1974 and inspired by the civil rights movement, it has been in the forefront of documenting the artistic journeys created by photographic artists often overlooked by the mainstream art world.

En Foco, through its Chairperson Frank Gimpaya, was instrumental in discovering Manuel Rivera-Ortiz.[1][2] Manuel Rivera-Ortiz is the best known photographer featured in En Foco's exhibitions and publications.[3]

Through its visual arts programs, En Foco strives to balance the inequities of the art world by creating the 'missing pages' in art history. In 1984 it created the bilingual (English/Spanish) photographic magazine Nueva Luz, which concentrates on works by U.S. based photographers of color. Some photographers En Foco has exhibited or written about are Hank Willis Thomas and Sama Raena Alshaibi.

History

Inspired by the 1973 traveling exhibition Dos Mundos (organized by the Institute of Contemporary Hispanic Art and exhibited in New York City, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico), a group of Puerto Rican photographers - Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Phil Dante, and Roger Cabán - banded together to form the core En Foco group and incorporated in 1974.[4]

Notes

  1. ↑ "The next Manuel Rivera-Ortiz?". The Esther Benjamins Trust. Archived from the original on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2010-07-28.
  2. ↑ En Foco Photographers
  3. ↑ Nueva Luz Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 2, pgs. 2-9, 2006.
  4. ↑ Gonzalez, David (2012-01-24). "Focusing on the Hidden History". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-02-23.

References

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