Frank Espada Photographs & Papers Collection, 1946-2010
The Special Collections Library at Duke recently acquired the Frank Espada Photographs & Papers Collection, 1946-2010, containing over 16,000 items, primarily photographs, oral history interviews, and papers. Frank Espada migrated to NY from Puerto Rico with his family in 1939. A lifelong activist and community organizer, he began photographing the Puerto Rican struggle to survive in the United States in the late 1950s. From New England to Hawaii, Espada traces the Puerto Rican diaspora across the United States photographing work sites, migrant labor camps, family farms, urban neighborhoods, cultural events, political actions and activist organizations. He photographs and interviews Puerto Ricans who return to the island to retire or make a new start. Espada published his life’s work in 2006, The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People. The Espada collection contains all of the manuscript materials as well as other papers and correspondence.
Here is a 2009 New York Times review of an Espada exhibit and a link to the collection finding aid. If the Espada collection would support your teaching or research interests, contact Karen Glynn, Archive of Documentary Arts, 660.5968, karen.glynn@duke.edu
Holly Ackerman
Duke University
