Claudio Nolasco’s photography invites us to accompany him on an exploration of everyday life, discovering the unexpected and the beautiful along the way. A self-described “post-documentary photographer,” Nolasco privileges personal experience over the objective, reportorial point of view pioneered by documentarians such as Walker Evans (1903-1975) and Robert Frank (1924-2019). The works featured in Translating Place epitomize this approach while also tracing the photographer’s responses to three cities that have shaped his life and career. Though very different in character, the American communities featured in this exhibition reflect, through Nolasco’s selective eye, Latin America’s rich, varied, and ever-evolving cultural impact, asking the viewer to seek out the poetry inherent in the world around us. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Williamsburg (a Brooklyn, New York neighborhood that was once an immigrant enclave), Nolasco has captured the impact of gentrification on his childhood home, whose skyline and demographics have been entirely transformed by luxury high-rises. In Albuquerque, where the photographer lived in 2014, he trained his lens on a local tragedy: the murder of two Native American men by three Latino teenagers. Most recently, Nolasco (who joined the University of Miami’s faculty in 2020) drew inspiration from South Florida’s visual richness, capturing sights—both mundane and eccentric—that our bright, subtropical sunlight has thrown into sharp focus.
Translating Place: Brooklyn, Albuquerque, Miami was organized by the Lowe Art Museum with the University of Miami’s Department of Art & Art History. Funding is provided by the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the City of Coral Gables; Beaux Arts Miami; the Lowe Advisory Council; and Lowe members.
