Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers by David William Foster (review)

"Art history is a funny thing. It will focus on some stories (relentlessly), while often completely ignoring others," Los Angeles Times critic Carolina A. Miranda commented, in response to a 2014 Ricardo Valverde retrospective exhibition.¹ Indeed opportunities to learn and think about art, and in particular photography made by US-Americans of Mexican descent, seem to be few and far between. At a national level, this occurs in a context of increased institutional attention to Latin American artists (i.e., from Central and South America) on the one hand, and of heightened xenophobia and racism, on the other. Representation matters, given that the Latino population constitutes the largest ethnic minority group in the country. David William Foster's book Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers provides a valuable contribution in this respect.

The volume begins with a caveat: instead of a "comprehensive history of Chicano photography of the sort that might provide a unified chronology and yield a unified 'vision' of the Chicano experience through the medium of photography" (10), the author proposes a series of ten essays about the work of "photographers who self-identify as Chicano or Mexican American" (7), work that "focuses on what has come to be defined as the Chicano experience" (5). Should one be interested in a broader assessment of the issues touched upon here, he notes, "it might be more appropriate in historical terms to look at Hispanic or Latino artists as a whole and not just those who are Chicano-identified" (10).

This consequential historiographic question has become central to US cultural politics, as the field of art has made important strides toward incorporating Latin American and Latinx cultural practices into the curriculum, if not the canon. Many instances from this ongoing discussion may be listed; for instance, one might revisit debates spurred by the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2014). Nonetheless, the present volume strikes another chord. At the peak of the Chicano civil rights movement (1965–1975), demands for social justice contributed to making a discriminated, marginalized population visible. The works presented in this volume originate, for the most part, in its aftermath. And, perhaps most importantly, it has become known due to exhibitions and publications that are even more recent. So, how should one position this work? Within a geo-political canon of US-American art in general? Following the Latinx/Latin American paradigm, in relation to the various regional and national contexts in the Americas? Or somewhere in between? The answer, I would suggest, lies within the individual trajectory of each practitioner.

Amongst the precursors for his book, Foster notes scholarly contributions such as Chon A. Noriega's From the West (1995), and exhibitions such as picARTE! Photography Beyond Representation (Heard Museum, 2004), Cotidiano: Latino/US (2014) and Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement (LACMA, 2008). In contrast to such overviews, which are inevitably partial, the present study argues for a more direct engagement with individual bodies of work, located within the immediacy of their context. In establishing his corpus, Foster notes that his study focuses exclusively on work that "must have been published in book form" (4). Nonetheless, this is not a study of photobooks per se, making the definition of what is exactly meant by "book form" somewhat confusing (6). This selective approach leaves out significant developments from the practitioners' oeuvre, which may have ultimately served to deepen readers' awareness of the political, social, and aesthetic implications of the projects at hand. Even with a limited corpus, and despite the ephemerality of photography and the unavailability of some of this work (153), archival research or interviews with the photographers would have further enriched the present study. That said, perhaps Foster's approach is most effective—and affective—in smaller measures, in how it summons critical subjectivity, turning one's attention toward these stunning bodies of work. Undeniably, the historic marginalization of Chicanos has affected and continues...