Damaso Reyes on Robert Frank, Photojournalism and Art Posted on August 6, 2009 by Anuradha Vikram
Taking inspiration from Robert Frank, Damaso Reyes has spent the last few years documenting social changes in the European Union for his project, The Europeans. Reyes is an artist and photojournalist who studied photography at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, honing his craft as a reporter for the New York Amsterdam News and other major news publications. The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Reyes grew up in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
As a Spanish-speaking, first generation American and a black man, Reyes, like Frank, grew up feeling he was both part of and outside of his community. That ability to be both insider and outsider is what allows him to move freely with his camera through worlds most people never see. As immigrants, Reyes’ parents were able to find a sense of civic belonging in the United States which, he has observed, continues to elude immigrants to the European Union. For this reason, he has chosen to photograph asylum seekers, whose dignity and humanity he tries to bring across in his images. Reyes’ inability to speak local languages has also helped him, much as Frank’s poor English helped him, to gain access to places such as closed-door EU government meetings, where he photographs as a fly on the wall.
Damaso Reyes, The Europeans: Young Turkish Women Wait for the Train
