Photo of the Week #123

January 11, 2021
We are saddened by the passing of great Nuyorican photographer Adál Maldonado, known to most of us as simply Adál.
Katharine Q. Seelye, writing for the New York Times, memorialized Adál in the paper's January 9 print edition:

“Adál Maldonado, an influential Puerto Rican photographer and artistic provocateur who explored the psychological and cultural fallout of the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York, died on Dec. 9 in San Juan. He was 72.
…
Mr. Maldonado’s primary subject was identity, a concept that for him was constantly shifting depending on his circumstances. When he was a teenager, he moved with his family from their home in the mountainous Puerto Rican countryside to New Jersey and then to the urban cacophony of the Bronx. The experience left him with a sense of displacement that would be the driving theme of his art and make him a quintessential 'Nuyorican' — one who straddles New York and Puerto Rico and feels entirely at home in neither.
…
For more than 45 years Mr. Maldonado — who went by just Adál professionally, a moniker suggested to him by the photographer Lisette Model — worked in multiple mediums across various genres. His art was often infused with bitingly satirical humor and a subversive political message.”