Chicana Photographers LA!

Chicana Photographers LA! was first exhibited at Occidental College’s Weingart Gallery in the fall of 2017 in collaboration with The Avenue 50 Studio. The exhibition was organized to run concurrently with the Getty Initiative: Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, which presented Latin American and Latino art in over 70 institutions across Southern California. At that time, the exhibit provided a unique visual conversation among five established and emerging Chicana photographers while reflecting the historical importance of women photographers emerging from Los Angeles’ Eastside communities from the late twentieth century to the millennium.

In 2024, an updated and contemporary version of Chicana Photographers LA! will be exhibited in the Center for Creative Photography Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery as an adjunct exhibition to the Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva. With a nod to Bernal, who may be considered the father of Chicanx photography, these artists are concerned with neighborhoods, families, sacred spaces, and body and identity politics. They weave a visual tapestry of domestic and environmental transformations occurring across their home turf, some cultural, demographic, and diasporic, others directly confronting the impact of gentrification on Chicanx communities. 

From Christina Fernandez’ suburban landscapes to Sandra de la Loza’s archaeological ruins of a beloved, then destroyed neighborhood to the situated biographical and autobiographical portraits by Laura Aguilar, Amina Cruz, and Star Montana, the vast cultural terrain of Southern California, is depicted and infused with family narratives, memory, and belonging.