By David W. Dunlap
Though they might get an argument from those who were born and raised in Puerto Rico, many New Yorkers identify themselves — first and foremost — as Puerto Rican. What does that mean?
They are in some ways the citizens of a notion, inhabitants of an idea.
Prose doesn’t do this enigmatic state much justice. Poetry gets closer. But photography! Ah, there you can see it, even if you can’t exactly define it. “Being Puerto Rican, just like being American or French or Lebanese, is a feeling,” wrote Adriana Teresa, the curator of a show called “Dia” in the FotoVisura Pavilion at the New York Photo Festival. “Although filled with contradictory nuances, it is real.”
Real enough, certainly, to be captured on film. “Dia” embraces the period from the 1960s to the 1980s — when Puerto Rican New York was very much on the rise — with the work of eight photographers: Máximo Colón; Joe Conzo; Perla de León; Pablo Delano; Frank Espada; Ricky Flores; David Gonzalez, a Times colleague and frequent contributor to Lens; and Francisco Reyes II. The show is not intended to be a comprehensive survey (for those of you struck by the absence from the roster of names like Evelyn Collazo, Ben Fernandez, Ángel Franco, Adal Maldonado, Tony Vasquez and Tony Velez).
