‘The Future Is Latinx’ at Hartford’s Park Street library

A brightly colored future that spans Mexico, Puerto Rico and Connecticut is highlighted in “The Future Is Latinx,” a new photography exhibit at Park Street Library @ the Lyric in Hartford.

Photos made by two Connecticut photographers, Rafael Concepcion and Adrian Martinez Chavez, are on view at the Hartford Public Library branch at 585 Park St. through the end of May.

Both the artists are enrolled in MFA photography programs in Connecticut. Chavez, who went to the University of Hartford as an undergraduate, is studying at the Yale School of Art. Concepcion will receive his masters degree from the University of Connecticut next month.

Most of Chavez’s work is found downstairs in the library’s front cafe area, but there is also a digital screen showing carefully chosen family photos of the artist on the second floor, where Concepcion’s work is also hanging.

Chavez says the slide show is about “the early days, when my parents first came. They emigrated from Mexico in the 1980s. The photos are largely looking at family, our family, being Mexican American.” He noted that his parents worked on Broad Street right next to the old library.

Concepcion uses photography “as a means to explore things I’m interested in. My work revolves around communication. A lot of what I do is in the tradition of documentaries.”

Concepcion’s photos are large and vivid, taken on trips he made to Puerto Rican between 2016 and 2021. Some have people posing in them, but many, including an arresting image of dogeared books lying on a bench, do not.

The Chavez photos displayed downstairs are in black and white and include a couple in which men in Chavez’s family are cutting their hair.

The exhibit was curated by Julia Winter, the art gallery curator for Eastern Connecticut State University.

“I asked the faculty at UConn for suggestions,” Winter says. “I have a long history of working with public libraries. Museums are not enough. Artists should exhibit wherever they can.”

Winter says she was open to other media for this exhibit, but liked the idea of having just photography, and thinks that “photography is easy to display” in libraries.

“The Future Is Latinx” is only the second art exhibit to be held at the Park Street Library @ the Lyric, which opened last year when the old Park Street branch moved to a large new facility on the site of the old Lyric cinema.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.