Always Running: Photography by Luis J. Rodriguez

Opening April 14, 2026, the Vincent Price Art Museum (VPAM) at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) proudly presents Always Running: Photography by Luis J. Rodriguez.

The exhibition marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Chicano poet, novelist, journalist, and group chief’s acclaimed first memoir, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Rare and unpublished, the images on view doc the individuals and historic neighborhoods that touched and influenced Rodriguez’s adolescence from the Sixties by the Eighties.

Born in 1954, Rodriguez grew up in Watts and the East Los Angeles space. As a youth going through poverty and racial discrimination, he joined a gang and have become concerned with medication on the age of twelve. Always Running––and a number of other of his different literary works––chronicle his experiences with violence, dependancy, restoration, and private transformation, in the end discovering refuge by poetry and the humanities. As a photographer, Rodriguez documented Chicana/o youth and gang tradition from his distinctive vantage level, together with murals and landscapes of East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley.

Today, Rodriguez serves as a mentor and group chief, inspiring youth by his work at Tía Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore within the Northeast San Fernando Valley, which he co-founded alongside along with his spouse and activist Trini Rodriguez and brother-in-law Enrique Sanchez. Together, they supply alternatives for younger individuals to entry literacy, artwork, and artistic expression as alternate options to systemic violence.