New York, New York, United States
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz (b. Puerto Rico) is an American documentary photographer, the author of several photographic collections and the recipient of a number of awards. He is best known for his documentary photographs of people's living conditions in less developed countries. Rivera-Ortiz was born into a poor family in the barrio of Pozo Hondo, outside Guayama on the Caribbean coast of Puerto Rico, the eldest of ten children (including four half-siblings and two stepsisters). He grew up in a corrugated tin shack with dirt floors without running water. His father hand-chopped sugar cane in the fields of Central Machete and Central Aguirre in the declining days of the Puerto Rican sugar industry, and, following the Zafra or sugar-harvesting season, labored as a migrant farm worker in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Specialties: International Photographer • Photoreportage • Photojournalism • Journalist
The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film is a non-profit private operating foundation headquartered in Rochester, New York. The Foundation was established in 2009 by Rivera-Ortiz to support underrepresented photographers, in particular from less developed countries in four specific program areas: book publications, traveling exhibitions, awards and grants, and educational programs.
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Photographer and Founder, The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film Manuel Rivera-Ortiz is a documentary photographer and a journalist. The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism recently selected his work documenting people’s living conditions in the developing world as one of 50 Great Stories produced by alumni over the past century. As the President & Founder of The Manuel Rivera-Ortiz Foundation for Documentary Photography & Film he supports and encourages emerging and established photographers and film-makers to engage in social documentary projects and issues. His photographs are included in American and international collections.
MANUEL RIVERA-ORTIZ photographs the remarkable lives of the forgotten around the world, capturing stories of hardship and hope in some of the poorest nations; those overlooked in the immediacy of current events, mass media, and popular culture. The people Rivera-Ortiz photographs are not typical fodder for a more traditional reportage, nor are they a part of sensational ‘breaking news’ segments. Instead these are the universal poor, those with no compelling story to tell outside their everyday struggle with landless poverty. Colored by a personal understanding of poor people living around the world, Rivera-Ortiz' own life of poverty growing up in shantytowns in southern Puerto Rico drives him to partake in the conversation to better people’s lives.
Photograph poverty and hope around the world.