Scope and Contents

Photographs and negatives taken by Frank Espada, mostly images from his most well-known body of work, The Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project, which consists of several hundred prints and thousands of negatives of Puerto Rican communities across the Unites States. The purpose the project was to establish the national presence of Puerto Ricans in the United States, to celebrate Puerto Rican culture and Latinidad, and to make a political statement.

Arrangement

Collection is arranged into five series.

Series 1: Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project, 1962-2008, undated

Sub-Series 1.1: Photographic and Digital Prints, 1962-1986, undated

Sub-Series 1.2: Proofs, 1979-1986, undated

Sub-Series 1.3: Contact Sheets and Negatives, 1964-1987, undated

Sub-Series 1.4: Interviews, 1980-1982, undated

Sub-Series 1.5: Site Notebooks, 1981-1985, undated

Sub-Series 1.6: Exhibition Materials, 1967-2008, undated

Sub-Series 1.7: Newspaper Clippings, 1983-2007

Series 2: Civil Rights Era Materials, 1963-1974, undated

Sub-Series 2.1: Black and White Prints, 1963-1974, undated

Sub-Series 2.2: Proofs, Negatives, and Contact Sheets, 1963-1968

Sub-Series 2.3: Slides, 1969

Series 3: Personal Papers, 1966-2007, undated

Series 4: Out of School Youth (OSY) Project, 1989

Series 5: Youth Environment Study (YES) Project, 1989-1991

Biographical / Historical

Francisco Luis Espada Roig, later known as Frank Espada, was born in Utuado, Puerto Rico in December 1930. He and his family migrated to New York City in 1939. He attended public school and after high school, briefly attended City College of New York. In 1949, he joined the Air Force.

In 1952 he married his wife, Marilyn. They had three children, Lisa, Jason, and Martin. Espada began working for an electrical contractor to provide for his family, a job he would hold for ten years.

There followed a second stint in the Air Force, during the Korean War, and then, in 1954, Espada began attending the New York Institute of Photography on the GI Bill. In the late 50s and early 1960s, influenced by mentors such as important New York-based photographers Dave Heath and the legendary W. Eugene Smith, Espada became intent on pursuing what he called his "first love," documentary photography, but this dream had to be delayed.

From the early 60s on, he became heavily involved in the New York community and the Civil Rights Movement, organizing voter registration drives, rent strikes, and marches for civil rights. He photographed many subjects in New York throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including the civil rights era. Because he was close to Puerto Rican activists and communities, he photographed these as well.

In the 1970s, he was a Ford Foundation Fellow working with the Drug Abuse Council. In 1979, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was finally able to receive income from photography. This fellowship allowed him to pursue his "life-long dream of shooting a major documentary" on the Puerto Rican diaspora. He documented Puerto Rican communities and the Puerto Rican experience around the United States, including Hawaii and Guam.

In 1985, Espada moved to San Francisco and was given the opportunity to teach at the UC Berkeley Extension Program. He discovered that he loved to teach, which resulted in what he referred to as "eighteen of the best years of my life," and he was revered by his students.

In 1989 he joined forces with the Youth Environment Studies (YES), documenting the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic. In 2005 he retired from teaching and continued working on his book, encompassing his documentation of Puerto Rican communities. The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People, reproducing many of his photographs with his incisive, poignant text was published in 2007, twenty-eight years after the Diaspora project had begun.

Frank Espada was an activist for justice and an important documentary photographer in the "socially conscious" tradition, who wrote: 'The purpose of showing my work is to get young people thinking, to stimulate their minds and hearts, to make conditions known, and to attack injustices wherever they exist." In his later years, he turned to color photography and landscapes for personal artistic expression. He passed away in February of 2014 from a heart problem.

Materials at Other Organizations

The Frank Espada Papers and Photographs collection consists largely of photographic prints, contact sheets, proofs, and negatives, chiefly dating from the mid-1970s through 2010, relating to Espada's Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project, his project work on indigenous Chamorro communities in Micronesia, primarily in Guam, Tinian, and Saipan, and his work documenting HIV/AIDS outreach and education in San Francisco. The largest body of materials, which includes photographs as well as manuscripts and recorded interviews, derives from Espada's work with the Puerto Rican communities which spanned several decades. A smaller group of materials, nineteen prints, associated contacts and negatives and several folders of documents, were created through Espada's activism in the Civil Rights Movement for voter registration and school desegregation in New York City from 1962-1970.

Other materials include research files on documentary topics he was currently investigating; materials used in preparation for his many photography project exhibits, large and small; teaching syllabi and notes from his photography courses; awards and memorabilia; and other manuscript and printed materials from his career in photography.

The Puerto Rican diaspora, between 1979 and 1981

83 photographic prints

[Frank Espada: artist file]

1 folder. Folder may contain clippings, press releases, brochures, reviews, small exhibition catalogs, resumés, other ephemera.

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Division of Science, Medicine, and Society HIV/AIDS Reference Collection, NMAH.AC1134

Manuel Quiles Films, NMAH.AC0765

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