Charles Biasiny-Rivera

Charles Biasiny-Rivera (November 10, 1930 – August 10, 2024) was an American photographer. He was the co-founder of En Foco, a collective of Puerto Rican photographers based in New York City.

Biography Charles Biasiny-Rivera was born into a Puerto Rican family on November 10, 1930, on Roosevelt Island in New York City. His father was a merchant seaman and his mother was a factory worker. He grew up in the South Bronx. In his teens, he taught himself photography by using a cheap plastic camera and reading library books detailing film processing.

Biasiny-Rivera left Metropolitan High School at the age of 14. Upon reaching the age of service, he joined the Air National Guard. In 1952, he joined the United States Air Force and was stationed in Korea during the Korean War, where he worked as a military photographer.

In the 1990s, Biasiny-Rivera had artist residencies at Light Work and then the Belagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation at Lake Como in Italy. During this time, he created composite images using black and white photographs that he hand-colored and then surrounded with intricate borders and hand-written poetry.

From 2021 to 2022, El Museo del Barrio presented the exhibition "En Foco: The New York Puerto Rican Experience, 1973–74". It was based upon a single portfolio of 79 photographs by the founding members of En Foco; Biasiny-Rivera, Cabán, and Dante.

Personal life and death In the early 1970s, Biasiny-Rivera bought a 19th-century barn in Olivebridge, New York, that he converted into a home.

In 1988, Biasiny-Rivera married Betty Wilde, and they had a daughter, Amelia Francesca.

Biasiny-Rivera died due to complications of lung cancer at his home in Olivebridge, on August 10, 2024, at the age of 93.