Photographic Diary: A Conversation with Máximo Rafael Colón
Las caras lindas, Loisaida, NYC, 1975. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, in 1950, Máximo Rafael Colón has spent most of his life in New York City. He came of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s as Puerto Ricans began founding institutions—such as the Young Lords Party, Taller Boricua, El Museo del Barrio, En Foco, and the Nuyorican Poets Café—that would shape New York’s history and community. He took up photography in earnest at 19 when he stepped into a darkroom at the School of Visual Arts for the first time. Quickly, he became involved in social justice and activism, collaborating with the bimonthly newspaper Unidad Latina = Latin Community News Service.
Colón’s involvement in decolonial politics and activism led him to document protests and sit-ins alongside other photographic pillars of the Puerto Rican experience in New York, like Hiram Maristany, and travel to Puerto Rico for the liberation of Nationalist Party member Carlos Feliciano and political prisoners Andrés Figueroa Cordero, Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, and Irvin Flores Rodríguez. Colón pursued portraiture as a medium to capture everyday moments, and New York Puerto Ricans’ vibrant musical and festival culture. Together these images are a loving portrait of a people fighting for respect at a time of great turmoil and political ferment. Colón continues his photographic activism, focusing on the leaders and issues of today, such as the Black Lives Matter movement or Puerto Rico’s debt crisis.
Colón’s career spans five decades throughout which he received wide recognition. His work has been a part of several prestigious exhibitions, among them:
Dos Mundos: Worlds of the Puerto Rican (1973), which the Institute of Contemporary Hispanic Art organized and Geno Rodríguez curated.
Presente! The Young Lords (2015) at the Bronx Museum, Museo del Barro and Loizada Art Center that Johanna Fernández, Yasmín Ramírez, Libertad Guerra, and Wilson Valentín Escobar curated.
Ida y Vuelta (2017), an exhibition at the Museo de Antropología, Historia y Arte UPR that Laura Bravo López curated. It later made its way to Hunter College.
CitiCien, 100 artistas 100 años del Jones Act (2018) at the Clemente Soto Vélez, Casa Ruth and Taller Boricua, which Viajero Román curated.
El sujeto develado (2019) at the Museo de Arte Dr. Pío López Martínez, which Mariel Quiñones curated.
His photographs are part of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños archives and the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection.
Colón is a gentle man with a ready smile and a genuine passion for photography and Nuyorican history and culture. Generous and candid, he visits Puerto Rico often and has deep concerns about the art, culture, and politics of Puerto Rico and New York. I met with him in Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 2024.
Intervenxions staff edited this interview for clarity and concision.
Máximo Rafael Colón, Self-Portrait, Loisaida, NYC, 1978. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
When did you begin to take photographs?
I developed an interest in photography when I was 13 or 14 years old. I have a powerful memory of sitting with my mother and sister to look at my stepfather’s photo album. They were pictures from his time in Korea; the album was black lacquer and mother of pearl. It would play classical music when you opened it. But it wasn’t until I was in community college that I had access to a darkroom.
I attribute my interest in photography to that period in my childhood. I did some sun prints. I still have some pictures of my friends from that time. But it wasn’t considered art. It was a very economically deprived neighborhood. We were routinely directed to trade school instead of university. Nobody thought art was a career people like us could pursue.
What was your relationship with your family like?
In ’54 or ’55, my mother left for New York alone, and my sister and I went to live with my paternal family in Ciales. I moved to New York when I was 8. My stepfather raised me. He’s Afro boricua. My mother is a redhead, full of freckles; she looks like she’s Irish. And she’s with this Black man. Can you imagine the amount of shit they had to take?
I came back to Puerto Rico when I was 22. Unlike other kids, I never came back for the summer. I came back for my political work in 1972. I was a representative of El frente unido, accompanying Federico Lora, the leader of El comité. We came to meet with the Nationalist Party. We met with Don Jacinto, who was the president of the party at that time. Blanca Canales, I have a picture of her from that period.
When I came back to Puerto Rico in 1972, I looked up my paternal family in Ciales. When I saw the river was all dried up and all this cement, I felt depressed. They had destroyed the beauty of the place.
But I kept coming back.
Solemn Moment, Manatí, Puerto Rico, 1978. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
Adrián y Luna, Washington, DC, 2017. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
We live in a world where pictures circulate on the internet. But back then, photos needed to be printed, published. Where were yours seen?
I worked for biweekly paper called Unidad Latina. Some of the pictures were published in the Comité del Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueño. Then in ’74, the defense committee for Carlos Feliciano—he was accused of possession of explosive artifacts—puts together a book. That’s when my pictures first got published. A leftist magazine called Ramparts also published them. Later, when people started writing histories of the period, they started contacting me and including them in books.
Coming to Puerto Rico in 1972 to do the political work you describe must have been difficult. In the 1970s, Puerto Rico had undercover police and surveillance as well as widespread persecution of socialists and independentists alike.
Oh, the persecution had begun earlier. All those colleges that began Puerto Rican Studies departments were full of people being persecuted for their activism and ideals in Puerto Rico. José A. Irizarry. Américo Badillo. They all end up in American colleges.
In ’72, they vandalized our van while we were in Humacao doing political work.
The Lesson, NYC, 1989. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
Many institutions were set up in the late 1960s and early 1970s by and for the Puerto Rican community. What was your relationship to them?
I was everywhere. I was at the Taller Boricua in the ‘70s. There, I met Sandra María Esteves. Her photograph is one of six of my portraits that are part of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Collection. And I was part of the original group of En Foco. If you look in Dos Mundos, you’ll see we are all included: Gino Rodríguez, Angel Franco, Adál Maldonado, and me. But then they said Ángel Franco and I were students, and we could not belong in the group.
The Nuyorican Poet’s Café started in early ’73. When they were organizing the Latin American Theater Festival with Joseph Papp and Ana María García, I hung out with them. I remember seeing Miguel Piñero and Miguel Algarín. I was friends with Tato Laviera,whom I’d met in ’69, and Pedro Pietri. Ana Marta Morales, who was part of the MPI, organized the Centro Puertorriqueño de las Artes. They were the ones who organized what might have been the first Fiestas de Loíza in the Lower East Side in conjunction with Los hermanos fraternos de Loíza. I worked with Tato Laviera on a series of concerts on Avenue D. I took pictures at an event on Sixth Street where most of the poets were. I photographed Miguel Algarín, Bimbo Rivas, Lucky Cienfuegos, Jorge Brandon, and Nicolassa Mohr.
I was also very much into music. I saw the Pleneros de la 21 when they were beginning, they were provocateurs of our culture.
I lived through it all. All the social struggles and upheavals of the ‘70s. In 1998, a group called Culture Clash from California were doing site-specific plays. Iris Morales, of Pa’Lante, told them, “Go talk to Máximo.” So they wrote a play called Nuyorican Story. And one of the characters is me.
I also participated in the project Realidades, which photographed Salvador Allende. I think I did it for free. I just wanted to be there.
Juan Flores, PhD, Museo del Barrio, NYC, 1987. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
Your portraiture is extraordinary. It has a feeling of great intimacy.
When I do portraits, yo quiero que la gente me mire. That’s my aim. I want the spectator to feel that they are being directly looked at. Also, I want people to let go of their pretensions. I am interested in melancholy.
Really? You seem like such a cheerful person.
I think that has to do with me.
I was a loner growing up. My parents migrated. They didn’t have the wherewithal to be there. When I was very young, my mother told me, “You’re a man. Go out there. But don’t make me a grandmother.” I was on the street all the time. When I was 13 or 14, I would come home, do my homework, and pa’ la calle. I survived my adolescence. I was a good student; I was an altar boy. But I did some crazy shit when I was a boy. I had no supervision.
Some of my friends were addicted to dope by the time they were 15. Others were drinking. I was lucky. My stepfather was very strict. You could not disrespect him. I wasn’t allowed to swear in the house. In a way, he is the only father I knew. I didn’t meet my biological father till I was 28.
Lucky Cienfuegos, Loisaida, NYC, 1974. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
Luis Guzmán, NYC, 1975. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
Did you do commercial photography at any point in your career?
No, let me tell you a story. At one point, Willie Colón’s band goes to a boys’ home, the Lincoln Home for Boys. So I take pictures there and when I’m done they tell me, “Mrs. Smith is going to retire. Will you take her picture?” So I do. And I go deliver it at the Empire State Building. For some reason, her office was there. And she says to me, “Can you do something to fix this?” pointing to the area around the eyes, meaning her crow’s feet. And I decided, “Oh, no, this is not for me.”
In some of the pictures, and from what you say, it seems like a man’s world, with very few women among the photographers or the poets.
It was. The only photographer was Sophie Rivera. I don’t know why she did not end up in the exhibition Dos Mundos. It was a man’s world; no doubt about it. But later, when I was teaching photography, it started to change. I had Ana María García as one of my students.
The thing is art wasn’t the province of poor people. As a poor person, you’re trying to put food on the table.
I felt like I didn’t know enough about Latin American and Puerto Rican photography and was always trying to learn more. It wasn’t until later that I learned about Manuel Álvarez Bravo or Frank Espada. Frank, I met later in life at a conference, but we never had a relationship. He had a very interesting history, and I would have loved to have a relationship because later on, I found out that Frank Espada was in a close relationship with Eugene Smith. And Eugene Smith was like a God. I would have loved to learn more about them.
Homage to Paul Strand, Oaxaca, México, 2001. Photo by Máximo Rafael Colón.
How has the Puerto Rican community in New York changed?
Migration is like a wave. One wave washes over the other. The young people have left and a smattering of old folks remain. One wave of migration takes over the next. El Barrio, which was Puerto Rican, gave way to the Mexicans, and now the yuppies are taking over.
When I first came back here in ’72, my family used to say, “Oh, tú eres Nuyorican,” and I said, “No, yo soy puertorriqueño. Yo nací aquí.” Those labels separate us.
People are constantly going on about the flag. And that’s a starting point, a way of being proud. But I wish they would identify with the history.
Do you work in digital photography?
No, I hate it. I don’t like looking at the image right away. I find it is a more intimate experience looking through the viewfinder and having to wait for the prints.
A few years back, I said to myself, “Okay, let’s see what this is all about.” I went out and bought a thousand dollars’ worth of equipment. But I ended up doing only one or two prints. I didn’t like it.
Then a few years back I began experimenting with the digital camera. It’s a series called My Upside Down World. Everyone has a camera these days. Everyone takes pictures; it seems even a monkey can do it. So I put my digital camera on my extended arm, with the lens facing backward, and took pictures upside down. They are fragments, incomplete pictures, sometimes taken without people knowing it. It’s an experiment about chance and photography, the opposite of craft. They are my reaction to digital photography. I began taking those pictures in 2005. In Cuba, in Paris, in Mainz.
When you look through the viewfinder in an analog camera, it’s so different. It’s like touching. Sometimes, even before I print an image, before I’ve seen the negatives, I think, “This is it; this is the picture.” Sometimes, too, I get so involved in what I’m doing that I forget to change the shutters, the aperture.
Most of the people I photograph I know. Photography is like my diary. If you look at my work, you’ll know what my life’s been about. I was everywhere.
