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The job of a gallery curator is not only to deliver collectively the very best photographs, however to rearrange them in a manner that provides us new views on them.
If Getty’s new exhibition has a theme, I’d say it is that the historical past of Chicano/a pictures in Los Angeles is just not all grainy documentary photographs of marches and protest indicators. It’s way more diverse, intimate and sudden than that.
For non-US readers unfamiliar with the time period, Chicano (masculine) and Chicana (female) typically describe folks dwelling within the United States who’re of Mexican descent.
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This doesn’t essentially imply they or their household are immigrants. Parts of what at the moment are California and Texas, amongst different states, had been as soon as a part of Mexico, therefore the oft-used phrase: “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”
Getty’s new exhibition, Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles, brings collectively Laura Aguilar, Reynaldo Rivera, George Rodriguez, Patssi Valdez and Ricardo Valverde.
These 5 photographers refused to decide on a method of working and, between them, constructed a extra diverse and expansive document of the City of Angels than any single one might have achieved.
Each to their very own
George Rodriguez shot police strains and picket indicators. Patssi Valdez staged elaborate, theatrical scenes in her personal residence.
Reynaldo Rivera photographed drag performers backstage at LA nightclubs. Laura Aguilar’s topic was her personal physique. Ricardo Valverde hand-colored his prints and painted straight onto them.
None of them were trying to do the same thing at all: this wasn’t a movement with a house style. Instead, this was a scene where very different instincts all found their subject in the same communities.
Rodriguez’s photographs sit at one end of the spectrum: straight reportage, shot on the ground at events such as the 1966 Sunset Strip riots and at United Farm Workers actions in Delano, where men lean against a car holding hand-painted placards that pay tribute to Cesar Chavez – one of the most biggest labor and civil rights leaders in US history, and a central figure in the Chicano Movement.
Valdez is at the other end entirely. Her images from backstage at a theater showcase performers mid-transformation, buried in paper costumes and half-applied makeup; the scene so cluttered it takes a moment to find the face in it. These aren’t documents of an event so much as constructions of a mood.
Aguilar’s Clothed / Unclothed series does something different again: it turns the camera on the artist’s family and her own body, presenting the same figures, dressed and undressed, side by side. Her Latina Lesbians portraits go further still, pairing a straightforward headshot with a handwritten statement from the sitter, so the photograph doesn’t have to speak alone.
Valverde and Rivera occupy their own strange middle ground. Valverde’s Dances with Muertos and his hand-painted Integrated School collage treat the photograph as raw material to be altered after the fact.
While Rivera’s nightclub portraits, of performers including Gaby at La Plaza, capture LA’s queer Latino nightlife with an intimacy that only comes from being inside the room.
Seen together, it’s all a reminder that a community’s history is not a monoculture – and that those who capture it best are often those who seek out the interesting stuff, in the corners and cracks.
Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles runs on the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, from September 01 2026 to January 03 2027. The exhibition is offered in English and Spanish. Admission is free, however timed entry tickets should be booked upfront.
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