Charles Biasiny-Rivera
Born in New York
Charles Biasiny-Rivera was born in New York City and is a graduate of the State University of New York in Photography and Latin American Literature and Culture (1989). He received two New York Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Fellowships in Photography (1992 and again in 2000) and an Artist in Residence award from Light Work, Syracuse, New York (1992). He began his career as a photographer during the Korean war where he served with the military. He later became an apprentice to photographer Sir Cecil Beaton and went on to work in magazine and fashion photography during the sixties and seventies. His early creative work was humanistic in nature, largely inspired by Robert Frank, Roy De Carava and W. Eugene Smith. He believes that his experience as a photographer documenting street theatre around the world through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation profoundly influenced his life and work.
Biasiny-Rivera was the co-founder of “En Foco, Inc“, an artist-run photography centre in the Bronx. He served as the organization’s executive director until he retired in 2005.
