Rivera began by asking her neighbors to be her subjects. “The images she made were majestic four-by-four-foot prints of everyday New Yorkers of all ages. They were time-stamped by their hair styles and clothing as citizens of the 1970s and ’80s, but they were made eternal by their direct gazes, formal poses and the nimbus of light with which Ms. Rivera surrounded them. Vivien Raynor of The New York Times likened these Nuyorican Portraits, as they were known, to the portraits of Édouard Manet; The Times’s Holland Cotter described them as incandescent.” – The New York Times
