Hiram Maristany is a photographer born and raised in El Barrio, New York. He came of age in the 1960s, when young New York–born Puerto Ricans were asserting a new cultural-political identity inspired by the Cuban Revolution, the Chicago Young Lords, and the civil rights and Black Power movements. Maristany was one of the earliest members of the New York chapter of the Young Lords Party and soon became its official photographer, capturing some of its most iconic moments. His involvement with the Puerto Rican arts movement began in the mid-1960s, and since then he has been involved in many landmark exhibitions—among the most seminal of which was The Arts Heritage of Puerto Rico: Pre-Columbian to Present (1974), a joint project between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and El Museo del Barrio (of which he would serve as interim director between 1974 and 1977). Recently, his work has been at the generative center of two major New York exhibitions: Anchor, at Hunter East Harlem (2015), and ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York (2015), at El Museo del Barrio and Loisaida.