Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu
Life on the Block
November 5–30, 2014
For her black-and-white photo essay Life on the Block, artist Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu spent six years focusing on the lives of young Puerto Rican women and their families on 103rd Street in Spanish Harlem. Although this particular area of Manhattan is just blocks away from the affluent Upper East Side, when Sanfeliu began the project in 2002, unemployment was high in the neighborhood and many families were relying on public assistance to meet basic needs. In addition, an underground economy based on drugs or other illegal activities had increased the death rate and prevalence of incarceration. Sanfeliu observed that brothers and fathers were strikingly absent within the domestic sphere, while many young women often dropped out of high school to take on the responsibilities of single motherhood. Despite the obstacles faced by these women, Sanfeliu’s intimate gelatin silver prints reveal their important roles within this community as they strive to make life better for themselves and for future generations on the block.
“During the years dedicated to this photo essay I observed the inner landscapes of these strong women of the block. I saw their desire to stretch their own boundaries and their inability to do so. These women often choose to be somebody in their block rather than nobody in a promising new horizon...This piece is an intense look at their roles as women in a machista culture, as Latinas in a white society, and as mothers of the upcoming American generations.”
Born in Spain in 1976, Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu is a photographer currently based in both New York and Barcelona. Her work has been exhibited in the United States and in Spain, with solo shows at Galeria Utopia Parkway and Casa de America in Madrid, Bienal Xavier Miserachs in Palafrugell, Spain, and Randall Scott and Art for Change galleries in New York City. In 2005 Sanfeliu participated in the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop, and in 2006 she was awarded the Nikon Sabbatical Grant from the National Press Photographers Association to continue her Life on the Block series.