El Museo del Barrio will present a major new exhibition honoring the legacy of pioneering photographer Sophie Rivera with Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures, the first museum survey dedicated to the influential artist. Opening April 23, the exhibition offers a long-overdue reassessment of Rivera’s contributions to photography and to Nuyorican visual culture in New York.
The exhibition also highlights Rivera’s longstanding relationship with El Museo del Barrio, where she organized exhibitions and presented her first solo show during the 1980s. Through this new retrospective, the museum revisits an important chapter in both the artist’s career and the cultural history of New York’s Puerto Rican and Latino communities.
The title Double Exposures references a photographic technique in which multiple images are layered together, a concept that mirrors Rivera’s exploration of identity and representation. Throughout her career, Rivera examined the complexity of her experiences as a feminist artist of Puerto Rican descent working in New York between the 1970s and 1990s. Her work challenged traditional portraiture while expanding the ways marginalized communities could see themselves represented in art.
The exhibition will feature a wide range of Rivera’s photographs, including portraits, documentary images, experimental self-portraits, and striking images capturing New York City’s subway and graffiti culture during the late 1970s. Visitors will also see vintage prints alongside previously unseen materials drawn from Rivera’s personal archive, offering a deeper look at the scope of her artistic practice.
Rivera emerged during a time when artists were pushing back against the limited and often inaccurate portrayals of Latine communities in mainstream media and art institutions. As one of the few women photographers associated with En Foco, a Bronx-based photography collective formed during the Nuyorican Movement, Rivera helped advance the group’s mission of cultural self-representation and visibility.
Among her most recognized works is the Latino Portrait series, which celebrated everyday Puerto Rican and Latino individuals in New York. The photographs were eventually displayed on a large scale throughout the city’s subway system, bringing images of people from these communities into public spaces across the city.
An accompanying publication, co-published by El Museo del Barrio and Aperture Foundation, will mark the exhibition’s opening. The book will serve as the first comprehensive monograph on Rivera’s work and will include more than 125 photographs, selections from the artist’s writings, and newly commissioned essays exploring her cultural and artistic impact.
With Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures, El Museo del Barrio continues its mission of highlighting artists whose work has shaped the cultural landscape of New York and beyond. The exhibition also underscores the enduring influence of Puerto Rican and Latine voices in American art, reaffirming Rivera’s role as a visionary photographer whose work captured identity, resilience, and belonging in the urban environment.