Albert Coya

Photographed by Albert Coya, staff photographer for the Miami Herald, the image was produced as an oversize press photograph, intended for newspaper publication rather than gallery display. Yet its visual language transcends reportage. By isolating the face and eliminating narrative cues, Coya transforms a news assignment into a work of stark portraiture—one that insists on recognition rather than pity.

Albert Coya — Miami Herald Staff Photographer (1970s)

Coya’s journalism work chronicled social issues and everyday life in South Florida, contributing to the Herald’s visual documentation of urban America during a period of demographic change and economic challenges.

Created during a moment when homelessness was becoming increasingly visible in American cities, the photograph stands as both document and reckoning. It reminds us that social history is not only told through policies and statistics, but through individual lives - faces that carry the consequences of economic and social neglect.

The verso bears newsroom markings and the date February 26, 1978, reflecting the editorial practices and terminology of the period. Preserved today, these marks serve as historical evidence of how homelessness was documented—and often labeled—within mainstream media at the time.