Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com
A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
Remembering Charles Biasiny-Rivera
12 September 2024
Charles Biasiny-Rivera passed away from lung cancer in August at his home in Olivebridge, N.Y. The founder and director emeritus of En Foco was 93.
Biasiny-Rivera was born in 1930 on Roosevelt Island in New York City, the youngest of three children of Puerto Rican parents. Nikolas Biasiny, his father, was a merchant seaman while his mother, Josefina (Rivera) Biasiny, worked in a factory.
He was a teenager in the South Bronx when he got his first camera, an inexpensive plastic one. He read library books to teach himself how to process film.
He left Metropolitan High School in the Bronx at 14 and joined the National Guard. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1952 and was stationed in Korea during the war, working as a military photographer.
'I didn't meet many other assistants or photographers that were Latinos.'
In 1990, he earned a bachelor's degree in photography and Latin American studies from Empire State College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Returning to New York City, he found work as a photography assistant. British photographer Cecil Beaton used him to set up cameras, lenses and lighting when Beaton traveled to New York for shoots.
"I didn't meet many other assistants or photographers that were Latinos," Biasiny-Rivera said. "When I did stumble across a few, we had a lot to talk about."
That led him to found En Foco in 1974 with his fellow photographers Roger Cabán and Felipe Dante. The group would travel around the city in his Volkswagen bus mounting pop-up exhibitions in parks in Latino neighborhoods. He served as En Foco’s executive director for more than three decades.
During that time, the collective expanded into a nonprofit organization to support photographers and artists from a variety of underrepresented communities. It has mounted exhibitions of socially conscious work in museums and galleries around the country.
In 1985, Biasiny-Rivera founded Nueva Luz, a biannual magazine featuring the work of photographers like Carrie Mae Weems, Laura Aguilar, Delilah Montoya, Dawoud Bey and Sophie Rivera.
His own street photography has been exhibited at the Smithsonian Institution, the Bronx Museum of the Arts and El Museo.
"You really do have to understand that when you enter a neighborhood, the neighborhood sees you as a stranger, because they know everybody, so you don't want to become noticed," he said in 2022. "So you hang out a little bit, smoke some cigarettes, say good morning, good afternoon to people."
He is survived by his wife Betty Wilde-Biasiny, who he married in 1988, their daughter Amelia F. Biasiny, stepdaughter Nikola Biasiny Tule and two grandchildren.