Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography

Photograph of children playing in the water from a fire hydrant by Hiram Maristany

America’s urban streets have long inspired documentary photographers. After World War II, populations shifted from the city to the suburbs and newly built highways cut through thriving neighborhoods, leaving isolated pockets within major urban centers. As neighborhoods started to decline in the 1950s, the photographers in this exhibition found ways to call attention to changing cities and their residents. Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography explores the work of ten photographers—Manuel Acevedo, Oscar Castillo, Frank Espada, Anthony Hernandez, Perla de Leon, Hiram Maristany, Ruben Ochoa, John Valadez, Winston Vargas, and Camilo José Vergara—who were driven to document and reflect on the state of American cities during these transformative years.

Description

Rather than approach the neighborhoods as detached observers, these artists deeply identified with their subject. Activist and documentary photographer Frank Espada captured humanizing portraits of urban residents in their decaying surroundings. Hiram Maristany and Winston Vargas lovingly captured street life in historic Latino neighborhoods in New York City, offering rare glimpses of bustling community life that unfolded alongside urban neglect and community activism. Working in Los Angeles, Oscar Castillo captured both the detritus of urban renewal projects and the cultural efforts of residents to shape their own neighborhoods. Perla de Leon’s poignant photographs of the South Bronx in New York—one of the most iconic blighted neighborhoods in American history—place into sharp relief the physical devastation of the neighborhood and the lives of the people who called it home. John Valadez’s vivid portraits of stylish young people in East Los Angeles counter the idea of inner cities as places of crime. Camilo José Vergara and Anthony Hernandez adopt a cooler, conceptual approach. Their serial projects, which return to specific urban sites over and over, invite viewers to consider the passage of time in neighborhoods transformed by the urban crisis. The barren “concrete” landscapes of Ruben Ochoa and Manuel Acevedo pivot on unconventional artistic strategies—like merging photography and drawing—to inspire a second look at the physical features of public space that shape the lives of urban dwellers.

The title of the exhibition is drawn from Piri Thomas’ classic memoir Down These Mean Streets (1967), where the author narrates his upbringing in New York City’s El Barrio. Like Thomas, these photographers turn a critical eye toward neighborhoods that exist on the margins of major cities like New York and Los Angeles. The exhibition is drawn entirely from SAAM’s collection and showcases many new acquisitions by Latino artists. It offers a chance to see how these photographers responded to the urban crisis in the communities where they lived and worked.

Down These Mean Streets is organized by E. Carmen Ramos, SAAM's deputy chief curator and curator of Latino art.

Visiting Information

May 11, 2017 August 5, 2017
Open Daily, 11:30 a.m.–7:00 p.m
Free Admission

Videos

Credit

The Latino Initiatives Pool of the Smithsonian Latino Center provided generous support for the new acquisitions featured in this exhibition. The Bernie Stadiem Endowment Fund supports the installation and programs.

Online Gallery

The American city underwent unprecedented transformations after World War II. As middle-class populations shifted to the suburbs and new highways cut through thriving neighborhoods, many cities began to experience economic and social disintegration, especially in Black, Latino, and working class communities.

Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography unites the work of ten artists who critically reflect on the state of urban America primarily between the 1960s and early 1980s, when government initiatives that sought to address the needs of cities in crisis sparked public debate. The title is drawn from Piri Thomas’s classic 1967 memoir Down These Mean Streets. Like Thomas, their work challenges perceptions of embattled cities and explores the human narratives that unfolded in communities across the United States.

This exhibition examines how Latino photographers, many of whom came of age in urban neighborhoods, frame their environment. They approach the street not as detached observers but as engaged participants by turning to portraiture, urbanscapes, serial photography, or unconventional manipulations of the photographic image. Many contribute to a long tradition of socially driven documentary photography. Others adopt conceptual strategies or use color photography to capture a less romantic image of the American city. Their work reexamines neighborhoods often viewed as places of social decline and affirms the strength of community in urban America.

The Latino Initiatives Pool of the Smithsonian Latino Center provided generous support for the new acquisitions featured in this exhibition. The Bernie Stadiem Endowment Fund supports the installation and programs.

Artists

Manuel Acevedo
born Newark, NJ 1964
Oscar R. Castillo
born El Paso, TX 1945
Perla de Leon
born New York City 1952
Frank Espada
born Utuado, Puerto Rico 1930-died San Francisco, CA 2014
Anthony Hernandez
born Los Angeles, CA 1947

Born in Los Angeles, California, 1947. Currently resides in Los Angeles. Hernandez received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1975, 1978 and 1980.

Hiram Maristany
born New York City 1945-died St. Petersburg, FL 2022
Ruben Ochoa
born Oceanside, CA 1974
John M. Valadez
born Los Angeles, CA 1951

Muralist and pastel artist, grew up in the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.

Winston Vargas
born Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic 1943
Camilo José Vergara
born Santiago, Chile 1944