I was excited to find this article on the TIMES magazine webpage today - a book by photographer Arlene Gottfried about the Puerto Rican community in New York's Lower East Side neighborhood. It had some significance for me, as my father and his sisters grew up in the projects of Avenue D, their family a part of the Puerto Rican exodus, just a decade or two before Gottfried started photographing for her book.
I was invited by a chagra friend of mine to Ibarra. He has two champion Andalucian horses who he trains, breeds and parades at provincial cabalgatas. I had the luck to see one of them, Mariscal, at the stable where he keeps his horses along the shores of one of Ibarra’s many lagoons. One of the most beautiful horses I have ever seen.