- [Announcer] The following program is available with audio description and closed captions.

(bright music) - This is Brooklyn, baby.

That's who we are, Brooklyn.

The real people.

(train honking) - [Russell] Yo, what's up, people?

This is Russell Frederick.

- [Anderson] Yo, and I'm Anderson Zaca.

- [Russell] Yo, we are here live from the darkroom in Brooklyn.

- [Anderson] We have some guests for you.

- [Russell] Every episode, we really take it back and show y'all some culture.

- [Anderson] Good photographers, masters, legendary printmakers, who are gonna come into the darkroom with us.

- [Russell] Tune in to Zaca and Russ Live from the darkroom.

(upbeat music) - [Anderson] This episode we bring you Master Joseph Rodriguez.

- Work!

Yo, y'all better get ready.

- [Anderson] He has a degree of photojournalism and documentary from the ICP in New York.

He worked for National Geographic, New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Newsweek, New York Magazine, Esquire, Stern, BBC News and the American Media, and advertising campaigns for Levi's, AIG and IKEA.

- Whoo.

I'm sweating, man.

- Yo, his list of books.

- Oh my God.

- Listen, I'ma just say this, he's made 10 books, some of his greatest hits are "Spanish Harlem," "East Side Stories."

- [Both] "Juvenile."

- [Russell] And his latest is "Taxi."

We wanna salute the hero, the mentor to many, OG Joseph Rodriguez.

- Y'all I'm with my Brooklyn brothers here.

I'm humbled today because Darkroom Masters started with someone who is so important, so important to me, so important to my life.

I met Beuford Smith when I was coming out of Rikers Island.

I was a mixed up guy.

I was out there shooting drugs.

Beuford gave me an alternative to say, yeah, you can still shoot, you shoot with a camera.

(cool music) - When did you know that documentary photography was really what you wanted to do, as opposed to, I mean, fashion, as opposed to maybe portraiture.

- Or landscaping, for that reason.

- Indeed.

- Well, it came in stages, 'cause when I was very young at 19-20 and I'm meeting Beuford Smith and being exposed to photography, I did it for fun.

I was an amateur, right?

I used to bring in my friends and my family to the house and just photograph them, and also, on my block, right?

I lived on Cumberland Street in Fort Greene, and that's when everybody hung out on the stoop, that's when people played dominoes right in front of the building.

That's my New York City culture, that's how I grew up.

You know, we said hello to each other, even though it was kind of edgy and dangerous and such.

So I just basically wanted to look at where I come from because there were great photographers out there in the world at that time that were photographing the way they thought they should show the world, and there was a lot missing.

When I was getting more serious about photography and studying photography at the International Center of Photography, you know, I would read the daily papers and all I would see, you know, in a neighborhood that was close to my heart, Spanish Harlem, you know, I saw it was always the crime that they would report on, you know, it was always about, you know, the sick babies or the garbage in the back or the violence.

And I knew, deep in my heart, I knew in my soul that there was more to say about people, like the people of Spanish Harlem, which, you know, I went on to do in Los Angeles, or I went on to do in Romania, or I went on to do everywhere in Africa or other places in the world that I had the opportunity to investigate and look at.

- Yeah.

- But most importantly, it was really about who we were as a city, right?

And how there was a lot missing in the conversations in the media.

- Right.

- Yeah.

So I felt this sense of drive, this dream, if you wanna call it that, which is we all have to start with a dream, right?

- [Anderson] Right.

- And I started with a dream, and then my dream seemed to be formalized, and then it was more about the dedication, and then the most difficult is discipline.

So as I was reading these stories, as I was learning our city, I'm also listening to music, like at the time I'm growing up, man, I've got Curtis Mayfield.

- Yeah.

- I got Aretha Franklin.

- Love it.

- I got The Dells, you know, and we're talking about the serious stuff that affected us, but we talked about love, we talked about love in the music, you know, and about change, and Stevie Wonder's like "Songs in The Key of Life," that album, I listened to it a thousands times.

- Hell yes, absolutely.

- You know, it was more about, look, how can I turn my negative into a positive?

- Positive, right.

- And Beuford allowed me the ability to explore that.

(lively music) - So when you shoot on the streets, you just have your camera and that's about it?

- Mm-hm.

- When you do your commercial work, you just have your camera or you all have the assistants, the lights, the trucks with the production and the whole nine yards?

- Oh no, this was a huge production, this was huge.

This particular shot is supposed to be, I'm supposed to be picking up his daughter to take her out to go have some fun.

The mother is over here, father's here.

This is HDMIs.

This is a huge production here, we have a generator truck, we've got stylists, we've got makeup, there's about 15 people on the set here.

- Okay.

- But my job is to make it look like it's just a normal every day.

- Really mundane, right.

- You know.

- Absolutely.

You know, we're saying that because people need to understand that documentary photographers that do street work also have a light under the commercial work.

- Absolutely.

- Because I didn't have that impression when I started photography as a documentary photographer and taking classes, you know, in college, I was not aware that a documentary photographer had access to commercial work like this.

And when I first saw your book and, you know, I saw your campaigns, I was so shocked and happy to see that you did that migration as well.

(lively music continues) Once you met Beuford, you took the class, and then you went out, bought a camera, and you already knew that that's what you were gonna do, and then you went to document Spanish Harlem.

How did that, from taking the Beuford class to Spanish Harlem, finishing that work, did you get paid to do that, was it on your own?

How did that process work out?

- I had to sort of look at 10 years of my life that I had lost, because from the age of 16 to the age of 26, I was out there on those streets.

So I was working, right?

I did explore the camera in a very sort of amateurish way.

And until I got mugged for my camera on DeKalb Avenue, right, in front of Brooklyn Technical High School in the middle of the afternoon.

- Fort Greene.

- So, you know, these brothers wanted my camera and I wasn't about to give up my camera with 135 millimeter lens, so I hit this dude with the camera, the camera broke, my glasses broke, they're stabbing me on the street.

And so, I was kind of taken back from photography, but I had a lot to catch up with, I had to get my GED, it was a time of affirmative action so I had to get into the university and get my education, as my mother would say, "Get my edumacation."

(both laughing) You know?

So I had those 10 years to try to get Joseph Rodriguez on track.

And so, it was really more about my university studies.

And then, after coming out and getting a job, working in the graphic arts industry, 'cause that's what I specialized in, in printing and paper and advertising, it was then that I started thinking differently and started thinking more about photography in a serious way.

And it wasn't until a couple years later that I decided to start going to ICP and help out in the darkroom and clean up and TA for certain teachers, and then- - Started from the bottom.

- Got turned into a scholarship, and then I was in school with Robert Blake and then Fred Ritchin, who was the head of the documentary photojournalism program taught me so much.

And then, I started to understand the power of story, and that's when I started to begin about looking at Spanish Harlem.

- Right, right.

- But before that.

- Okay.

- While even before I was in school, I was driving as a taxi driver, always part-time, sometimes full-time.

- Right.

- And when I got into the ICP, I didn't have time to really go out and photograph, and I didn't have that much money, so I could allow myself two rolls of Tri-X a week, and I started photographing my job and the essay is called "Taxi: Journey Through My Windows," which was pretty much how I was seeing the city through car windows.

- [Russell] Right, yeah.

- And so, and that's what we're celebrating somewhat today with this new book "Taxi: Journey Through my Windows 1977-1987."

So there was a journey for Joseph Rodriguez, which happened in stages, right?

In sort of 10 year spans, you know, by the time I'm 36, 37, I'm serious about photography at this point.

And then, I get an internship working with Black Star Photo Agency, I kept on shooting my Spanish Harlem, now I'm shooting in color, I can only afford a couple rolls of Kodachrome a week, and I'm up there every single opportunity I have.

And that went on for a whole year while I was working at Black Star in the library.

Then I decided that I was going to quit the job to see if I can try to attempt to work on this project full time.

- Quit the taxi cab driver or quit as you working with- - Well, no, I was still part-time driving a cab while working at Black Star, it was not enough money, so I had to do two jobs.

- Right, right.

- And so, I wanted to sort of quit Black Star.

- Gotcha.

- And go and do more work in Spanish Harlem.

(laidback music) So I'm around the country and we're in Jackson, Mississippi with this particular physician.

We are in New Orleans, looking at physicians who are looking at our own, because we have a lot of the diabetes and heart disease, and we tend to eat what we call the big people food, so, which gets us into a lot of trouble.

- [Russell] Right.

- And here we are in Washington, D.C., and so community nurses that are also reaching out to the community, we go to this housing complex where most of the folks don't go to the doctor.

- Right.

- Right?

So we have to bring the doctors to them, yeah.

- To them.

- And, you know, I got the honor to photograph Congressman Ted Kennedy before he passed away.

And 'cause he was very much, he was very formidable in trying to pass this legislation, for most of his career, he was fighting for us.

- Right, right.

- And here we are in Jackson, Mississippi, in the headquarters of the famous, famous African American newspaper called The Jackson Advocate.

And, you know, I had to photograph this sister and I wanted to photograph her, but I needed to think about the history of where we were looking at.

- And as I'm looking at the photographs, I could only help but see why they commissioned you for this job, your documentary background and your ability to connect and relate with people, this is exactly like what they were looking for, as opposed to just hiring a commercial photographer where they would get actors, but they knew that, okay, you could connect with people, you wanted real people, you know, for your photographs.

And so, that base in documentary, humanistic photography, would you say that has pretty much been, I mean, the best training ground you can have to relate to people and to do this kind of work?

- Well, no doubt, no doubt.

I mean, the more you spend with the human experience, the better photographer you become.

The older you get, the more experiences you see in life, that just opens up your prism.

- Right, right.

- And it opens up your ears more.

- Right, right, right.

And it really keeps the focus on, why are you really behind this camera?

- Right.

- Is it for people or is it really for yourself?

- Well, I think it's for both.

I mean, you know, I'll be very honest, you know, I just needed to be seen.

I mean, I was a kid growing up that I could never speak my mind, never share my mind.

So when I learned the abilities of what the camera could do, of course, I wanted to be seen, we all wanna be seen, that's why we wear these Nike shoes, or we wear, you know, these chains, or we go out with this, or we drive this car because we all wanna be seen.

We're human beings, and photography was invented for us to be seen.

- [Russell] So for those of you who don't know.

- [Anderson] Now you know.

- [Russell] OG is one of our heroes.

His work is a journey in really getting close to the issues and to the people and the humanity that is so complex in the world today.

And most of all, he hasn't forgotten where he comes from to really raise awareness about some stories that may be difficult for a lot of us, but stories that need to be told.

Thanks for watching.

- [Anderson] We are The Darkroom MCs.

- [Russell] This is Russ.

- [Anderson] This is Zaca, we're turning negatives into positives.

- [Russell] Peace.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues)