For Photography Lovers
A Guide to Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA is a Getty-led collaboration between arts institutions across Southern California which explores Latin American and Latinx Art as it relates to Los Angeles. Exhibitions are happening at more than 70 institutions, so we made a list of our top ten must-sees. For a complete list visit pacificstandardtime.org.
We’ll explore exhibitions at participating galleries in a future post.
Photograph by La Raza Photographic Staff. East L.A. High School Walkouts. 1968
The Autry Museum of the American West
LA RAZA
This exhibit explores how bilingual newspaper La Raza provided a voice to the Chicano Rights Movement, positioning photography not only as an artistic medium but also as a powerful tool of social activism.
Harry Gamboa Jr.: Chicano Male Unbonded
Photographer, essayist, and performance artist Harry Gamboa Jr. calls into question the relationship between the stereotypes of Mexican American men and the far more diverse community of artists, writers, academics, performers, and other creative thinkers who identify as Chicano in his Chicano Male Unbonded series. Photographed at night and situated within various aspects of Los Angeles’s distinctive urban geography, his subjects together comprise the Chicano avant-garde. (This exhibition supported in part by PAC·LA).
Obelisco / Obelisk, 1957, Sameer Makarius
The Getty Center
Photography in Argentina 1850-2010: Contradiction and Continuity
From its independence in 1810 until the economic crisis of 2001, Argentina was perceived as a modern country with a powerful economic system, a strong middle class, a large European-immigrant population, and an almost nonexistent indigenous culture. This perception differs greatly from the way that other Latin American countries have been viewed, and underlines the difference between Argentina’s colonial and postcolonial process and those of its neighbors. Comprising three hundred works by sixty artists, this exhibition examines crucial periods and aesthetic movements in which photography had a critical role, producing—and, at times, dismantling—national constructions, utopian visions, and avant-garde artistic trends.
The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830-1930 (at the Getty Research Institute)
Drawing on the Getty Research Institute’s special collections, this exhibition proposes a visual survey of the unprecedented growth of Latin American capital cities following the seasons of independence, observing how socio-political upheavals activated major changes in the city scale and the architectural landscape. The Metropolis in Latin America, 1830–1930 examines how imported models were reinterpreted into diverse forms of re-appropriation of the national colonial and pre-Hispanic past, ushering these cities into a process of modernization. During a decolonization progression of longue durée, centuries–old colonial cities were transformed into monumental modern metropolises, which by the end of the 1920s provide fertile ground for the emerging of today’s Latin American megalopolis.
Ken Gonzales-Day, "Danny," mural by Levi Ponce, Van Nuys Blvd., Pacoima , 2016.
The Skirball Center
Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day
For this original exhibition, the Skirball has commissioned Los Angeles–based artist Ken Gonzales-Day to create a new body of photographic work examining the mural landscape of LA—from East LA to Venice Beach, from Pacoima to South LA. Featuring over 100 photographs, Surface Tension by Ken Gonzales-Day: Murals, Signs, and Mark‐Making in LA considers what the city’s walls reveal about the many different communities that live here.
Another Promised Land: Anita Bremmer's Mexico
Another Promised Land: Anita Brenner’s Mexico offers a new perspective on the art and visual culture of Mexico and its relationship to the United States as seen through the life and work of the Mexican-born, American Jewish writer Anita Brenner (1905–1974). Brenner was an integral part of the circle of Mexican modernists in the 1920s and played an important role in promoting and translating Mexican art, culture, and history for audiences in the United States.
Carmen Argote, 720 Sq. Ft. Household Mutations, Part B , 2010. Carpet, paint, and Velcro (carpet from the artist's childhood home)
LACMA
Home--So Different, So Appealing
Organized in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Home—So Different, So Appealing features U.S. Latino and Latin American artists from the late 1950s to the present who have used the deceptively simple idea of "home" as a powerful lens through which to view the profound socioeconomic and political transformations in the hemisphere. Spanning seven decades and covering art styles from Pop Art and Conceptualism to “anarchitecture” and “autoconstrucción,” the artists featured in this show explore one of the most basic social concepts by which individuals, families, nations, and regions understand themselves in relation to others. In the process, their work also offers an alternative narrative of postwar and contemporary art.
Carne y Arena (requires extra admission and timed ticket - visit the website to book in advance)
Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s conceptual virtual reality installation CARNE y ARENA (Virtually present, Physically invisible) explores the human condition of immigrants and refugees. Based on true accounts, the superficial lines between subject and bystander are blurred and bound together, allowing individuals to walk in a vast space and thoroughly live a fragment of the refugees’ personal journeys. An immersive installation that reunites frequent collaborators Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki alongside producer Mary Parent and ILMxLAB, CARNE y ARENA is centered around a 6 ½-minute virtual reality sequence for one person that employs state-of-the-art immersive technology to create a multi-narrative light space with human characters.
Tatiana Parcero, Cartografia Interior #43 , 1996
Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College
Revolution and Ritual: The Photographs of Sara Castrejón, Graciela Iturbide, and Tatiana Parcero
War, indigenous cultures and inner transformation ferment in Revolution and Ritual: The Photographs of Sara Castrejón, Graciela Iturbide and Tatiana Parcero, at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery of Scripps College from Aug. 26, 2017–Jan.7, 2018. In this exhibition, the Williamson focuses on the works of three Mexican women photographers who explore and transform notions of Mexican identity in images that range from the documentary to the poetic.
*Nearby at Pomona College Museum of Art-- Prometheus 2017: Four Mexican Artists Revisit Orozco.
Laura Aguilar, Nature Self-Portrait #2 ,1996.
Vincent Price Art Museum
Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell
Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell is the first comprehensive retrospective of photographer Laura Aguilar, assembling more than one hundred thirty works produced over three decades. Through photographs and videos that are frequently political as well as personal, and which traverse performative, feminist, and queer art genres, Aguilar offers candid portrayals of herself, her friends and family, and LGBT and Latinx communities.
Pablo López Luz, Tijuana - San Diego County III, Frontera USA-Mexico, 2014
Craft and Folk Art Museum
The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility
Since the 1990s, the US-Mexico border has become an important site for creative exploration of issues related to emigration, immigration, labor conditions, hybrid identities, and transformation. The US-Mexico Border: Place, Imagination, and Possibility presents the work of contemporary artists who explore the border as a physical reality (place), as a subject (imagination), and as a site for production and solution (possibility). The inclusion of artists from various disciplines, including design, architecture, sculpture, painting, and photography, reflects the ways in which contemporary artists and designers themselves cross disciplinary borders. Many of the artists featured in the exhibition pursue a creative problem-solving process sometimes described as “design thinking,” which involves invention, social engagement, and the task of making. The exhibition will include work by artists and designers such as Teddy Cruz, Adrian Esparza, Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, and Ana Serrano.
Marie Orensanz, Limitada (Limited), 1978
Hammer Museum
Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985
In a way that no other exhibition has done previously, Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985 will give visibility to the artistic practices of women artists working in Latin America and US-born women artists of Latino heritage between 1960 and 1985—a key period in Latin American history and in the development of contemporary art. Fifteen countries will be represented in the exhibition by more than one hundred artists, with 260 works in photography, video, and other experimental mediums. Among the women included are emblematic figures such as Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta, and Marta Minujín alongside lesser-known names such as the Cuban-born abstract artist Zilia Sánchez, the Colombian sculptor Feliza Bursztyn, and the Brazilian video artist Leticia Parente.
jose cuevas nueva era 2014
Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego
Point/Counterpoint: Contemporary Mexican Photography 2000-2015
Point/Counterpoint features work from contemporary Mexican photographers created from 2000-2015. Presented as part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, MOPA brings together nineteen artists whose images explore the political, economic, and social changes of a country that is tied to the past, yet seeking a new future.
michael christopher brown, from the series paradiso 2015
Annenberg Space for Photography
Cuba Is
Revealing complexities both on and off the island, Cuba Is explores aspects of Cuba not easily accessed by foreigners, and sometimes not even by Cubans themselves. Born from indigenous, African and European roots, divergent politics and limitations in communication and commerce, the Cuba seen in this exhibition goes beyond the folklore and offers new insight into its current reality. Over 120 photos feature subjects ranging from defiant youth known as “frikis” to the hard-partying children of the 1%, the underground system of sharing digital content—“El paquete”—to Miami’s Chonga girls.