A major exhibition and publication, Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966 to 2026, opened at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California. The show includes about 150 works by 45 photographers across the United States and is presented as the first comprehensive survey spanning six decades of Chicano photography. The curatorial process emphasizes responsibility to artists, the institution, the cultural community, and students, because contextual choices shape how Chicano photography is taught and understood. The urgency of preserving overlooked histories is reinforced by the presence of nearly all living photographers at the opening. A decision to remove one work is treated as significant and not taken lightly.
"On February 7, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California, inaugurated a show I curated: Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966 to 2026. The largest exhibition ever mounted by The Cheech, it includes some 150 works by 45 photographers based across the United States. The exhibition and accompanying publication also represent the first comprehensive survey of this history, one that spans six decades, beginning with a pioneering generation of photographers who chronicled the Chicano civil rights movement in the Southwest."
"When I undertake a project like this, presenting what might be the first or among the first exhibitions or publications on a topic, I am deeply conscious of my responsibility to varied stakeholders - the artists, the institution, my cultural community, students, and so on - simply to get it right. The decisions I make during the curatorial process, and the ways I contextualize artists and their works, impact how Chicano photography will be understood, taught, and, hopefully, integrated into broader histories of art."
"Nearly every living photographer included in the show, active from the 1960s to the present day, attended the exhibition opening. Witnessing them together in one space to celebrate the event profoundly underscored for me the urgency of writing and presenting histories that have been dismissed, overlooked, or erased. That is why the decision to remove a single work from the show was one I did not take lightly."
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