Photography / Fotografía: LA and México at Getty

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The J. Paul Getty Museum presents “Every Minute is History: Five Views of Los Angeles,” on view Sept. 1, 2026, by Jan. 3, 2027.

Featuring works by 5 photographers—Laura Aguilar, Reynaldo Rivera, George Rodriguez, Patssi Valdez, and Ricardo Valverde—this exhibition explores how these artists expanded the understanding of the constructed surroundings and cultural panorama of Los Angeles, together with the representations of Latino/a communities within the metropolis in the course of the second half of the twentieth century.

“Through their unique visions, these photographers have challenged conventional narratives and broadened the ways Latino/a lives are represented,” mentioned Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “Their work documents histories that have often been overlooked, while also exploring deeply personal themes of identity, belonging, and creative expression.”

Emerging throughout and after the Chicano Liberation Movement of the Nineteen Sixties, the artists within the exhibition reveal the breadth of photographic practices that celebrated Latino/a and Chicano/a identities by mixing documentary, conceptual, and experimental approaches to create enduring information of Los Angeles’s cultural and bodily landscapes.

George Rodriguez

George Rodriguez (American, born 1937) documented each celeb tradition and the collective political struggles of Mexican Americans in the course of the Chicano Movement. His pictures seize pivotal moments in Los Angeles historical past, together with the Sunset Strip Riots, the United Farm Workers motion, and subsequent durations of social unrest, creating a strong visible document of civic activism and cultural change.
Ricardo Valverde (American, 1946–1998) used images to chronicle his household, mates, and the East Los Angeles group through which he lived. While working for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, he photographed each day life all through town. In the ultimate decade of his profession, Valverde experimented with photographic supplies, revisiting older negatives and altering prints with pigment and incised marks to create richly textured and more and more summary pictures.

Laura Aguilar

Laura Aguilar (American, 1959–2018) turned famend for her compassionate portraits of queer communities and for her weak self-portraits. After finding out at East Los Angeles College, Aguilar created intimate pictures that explored identification, visibility, and belonging, typically positioning her personal physique throughout the landscapes of the American Southwest.

Reynaldo Rivera

Reynaldo Rivera (American, born 1964 in Mexico) documented the colourful underground music, nightlife, and drag efficiency scenes of Los Angeles in the course of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. His pictures seize areas the place typical boundaries of gender, class, and sexuality dissolved, preserving communities that flourished exterior mainstream visibility.

Patssi Valdez

Patssi Valdez (American, born 1951), widely known as a co-founder of the influential artist collective ASCO, turned her consideration within the mid-Nineteen Eighties to extremely private studio-based images and documentations of performances. Her work typically centered on mates and collaborators, together with these concerned within the paper vogue reveals organized by Self Help Graphics & Art, the group arts heart in East Los Angeles that started staging annual Day of the Dead festivities in 1982.

“This exhibition brings together a number of important artists working in Los Angeles during the second half of the 20th century whose photographs have helped to shape and expand our understanding of this city and whose subject matter also often addressed Latino/a and Chicano/a culture, histories, and artistic aspirations,” says affiliate curator, Arpad Kovacs. “This exhibition is an opportunity for the Museum to celebrate recent acquisitions and reiterate our commitment to better understand and represent our local communities through our collection.”

“Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles” is curated by Arpad Kovacs, affiliate curator within the Department of Photographs, and is introduced along side “Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography,” which explores the wealthy tapestry of cultural and inventive dialogues which have formed Mexico’s photographic historical past.