Manuel Rivera-Ortiz
| Manuel Rivera-Ortiz | |
|---|---|
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz, Paris, France, 2009
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| Born |
December 23, 1968 Guayama, Puerto Rico |
| Nationality | Puerto Rican |
| Notable credit(s) | 2004: En Foco New Works Photography Award. 2007: Artist of the Year, Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester |
| Website | www |
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz (born December 23, 1968) is a stateside Puerto Rican photographer. He is best known for his social documentary photography of people's living conditions in less developed nations. Rivera-Ortiz lives in Rochester, New York, in New York City and in Zurich.
Rivera-Ortiz was born into a poor family in the barrio of Pozo Hondo, outside Guayama on the Caribbean coast of Puerto Rico, the eldest of ten children (including four half-siblings and two stepsisters). He grew up in a corrugated tin shack with dirt floors without running water. His father hand-chopped sugar cane in the fields of Central Machete and Central Aguirre in the declining days of the Puerto Rican sugar industry, and, following the Zafra or sugar-harvesting season, labored as a migrant farm worker in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.
When Rivera-Ortiz was 11 years old, his parents separated and his father moved with the children to the US mainland in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The separation from his mother, whom he has not seen since, had a profound effect on Rivera-Ortiz. He attended classes at Mt. Holyoke and Springfield colleges as part of the Massachusetts Migrant Education summer program, where he was offered his first courses in photography and film development. The family later moved to Rochester, New York.
After attending East High School (Rochester, New York) Rivera-Ortiz worked as a journalist. In 1995 he graduated cum laude with a B.A. degree as an English major from Nazareth College, and in 1998 he received his Master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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