By Steve Simmons – Posted at 9:04 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2923
Luis C. Garza’s photographic career took him from the tumultuous days of the Chicano civil rights movement to an encounter with a world-famous muralist to museum shows highlighting his striking street photography that turns moments of everyday life into art.
The Riverside Art Museum is now presenting “The Other Side of Memory: Photographs by Luis C. Garza” a collection of 66 black-and-white silver gelatin fiber prints now on view through Sunday, March 19 (for details see below).
The retrospective documents what Garza witnessed in the East Los Angeles of the early 1970s, in the South Bronx of the 1960s, and in Budapest, Hungary, the site of the World Peace Conference in 1971 where he encountered Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros.
On Display
This current show is an expansion of a previous exhibition of 35 prints,“ Time Refocused: Photographs by Luis C. Garza” also curated, as this show is, by Armando Durón.
“Armando chose the names of both shows,“ says Garza. “It’s like going back into my memory bank over the decades. Both titles make me feel as though I’m looking through my albums and photos and realizing how important they were in my early development and how they moved me forward.”
Among the photos of social justice protests on both coasts, his extensive work for the groundbreaking La Raza newspaper (later magazine), life in East L.A and the South Bronx and gritty street photography are the portraits. “I’m attracted to people,” says Garza. “The imagery draws me.”
His image of Cesar Chavez came about when a friend of the family who worked for Life magazine contacted Garza after the magazine’s photojournalist missed a flight. “They asked if I would take the assignment and I met Chavez at the Hilton Hotel in L.A. I got cleared and shot seven rolls of film of him at a UAW conference.” After sending in contact sheets and film to be developed he got a notice from the magazine, he remembers, that said “We’re dropping the story and returning your film. We can’t pay you.” But it’s okay, Garza says. “Now it’s my material.”
Young woman, neighbors, and passersby gather as blaring radios announce Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968
“Hopefully the images will resonate with viewers and bring out a conversation,” says Garza. “And I’m becoming more impassioned about hearing responses. I want to be a proverbial fly on the wall.”
Getting Started
In his early 20s, Garza first picked up a camera “in ’66’-67. It’s not what I wanted to do. It was accidental, not intentional. I just started taking pictures and I liked what I saw. Intent evolved over time.”
Moving to L.A from the Bronx, Garza was introduced to Sam Kwong, a commercial photographer starting a business. “Sam took me under his wing and offered me an apprenticeship and a basement apartment. I was on call 24/7 at his Melrose-La Brea studio. And I learned the basics of loading and shooting with 2¼ Hasselblad and 35mm Nikon film cameras.
It was on-the-job training as we constructed a darkroom to process film and soup silver-gelatin prints,” says Garza. “Working in the darkroom gives you the foundation, because when you’re looking at the shots, you begin to see the light, your exposures.”
The business folded after a year, “but it created a foundation and pathway for me in preparation for what was soon to follow,” says Garza.
Documenting A Movement
In the late ‘60s, Garza was introduced to Ed Bonilla, a community activist in L.A.’s Lincoln Heights. “He’d never met a Chicano from New York, and I’d never heard the word before,” recalls Garza.
“He said if I was looking for a job, he had one,” says Garza. “And I said, ‘Fantastic! What’s the job?’ and he said, ‘Organizing the people.’ I said, ‘How do you do that?’ He told me to bring my camera with me tomorrow morning, and that’s how I’m parachuted me into the burgeoning Chicano movement. Ed flipped my world view upside down. He introduced me to fellow organizers, activists, and editors of La Raza newspaper, the emerging voice of the movement.”
While he was shooting images of police brutality, segregation, demonstrations, protests of students walking out of school and events known as the National Chicano Moratorium and Blowouts, did Garza know he was chronicling civil rights campaigns for justice?
1971, Los Angeles, California
“Not at all,” says Garza. “We were just doing what needed to be done to get the newspaper (later magazine) out. “I never went into it thinking about how significant if was. But we did know this was one of the only media organizations covering the movement.”
How did Garza land at La Raza at such a pivotal time? “It was karma and fate,” says Garza. “I look back and wonder at the work we did. When I see it now, I realize how historically significant is was. It really opened by eyes photographically and allowed me to perceive the U.S. in another way. And that’s when I began photographing with seriousness, intent and purpose.
“Working for pioneering La Raza is a bit of distinction in my photographic journey as it set me on a career path,” says Garza. La Raza magazine ceased publication in 1977, after 10 years in operation.
Finding His Passion
Garza found his purpose in photography. “Photography became my reason for being,” he says. “I didn’t have arts training, so I cultivated the photographic eye: composition, framing, conscious thought into what you were photographing, and the messaging of what you were trying to convey, be it political, artistic, aesthetic, or whatever the emotion was that was running through your veins.
“I don’t have the luxury of intellectualizing as I take a photo,” says Garza. “It’s a gut reaction and becomes a spiritual moment. You go into the dark room and print and develop and say, ‘yes I did capture what I saw, and I’m impressed.’ The camera gave me the gateway and introduced me to the art of storytelling.”
He utilized those narrative skills in future roles as writer, producer and director of an Emmy-winning series, Reflecciones, and over 50 documentary projects, as public relations and special markets director for playwight Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit, and running the Plaza de la Raza Cultural Center for the Arts & Education in L.A.’s Lincoln Heights.
A Life-Changing Encounter
One day Irving Sarnoff, founder and director of the Southern California Peace Action Council, visited the La Raza office. He was organizing a delegation to the World Peace Conference in Budapest, Hungary in 1971. Garza was chosen to attend and take his camera.
When he got to Hungary, via a flight from New York to visit family, Garza learned that David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), one of the most famous of the “Mexican muralists” was part of the Mexican delegation to the international gathering.
“When he heard there was a Chicano in the American contingent Siqueiros asked for a meeting,” recalls Garza. “He hugged me and called me ‘compañero.’ He asked about the Chicano movement, and I tried to keep up with him as we talked art and revolution (Siqueiros fought in both the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War) over vodka and cigars.”
Two of Garza’s portraits of Siqueiros are in the exhibition (both paired with shots of Luis Valdez). In one, he’s pointing directly at the photographer. “I had no idea at the time that was he was mimicking his own self portrait from 1945,” says Garza.
“I’m no historian and I was in my mid-20s asking Siqueiros about art,” says an amazed Garza. “He opened doors for me and changed my life. When I returned to L.A. I dedicated myself to finding out more about his work.”
Garza became involved in a 40-year- struggle to save and exhibit AméricaTropical (1932), Siqueiros’ mural in L.A.’s Olvera Street. And in 2004, he discovered the long-assumed destroyed first mural painted by Siqueiros, Street Meeting (1932), painted at the old site of the Chouinard School of Art, near MacArthur Park.
Taking It To The Streets
Garza also relishes the title of “street photographer. “I would pick up my camera and go into an area, not because I was shooting for a publication, but because this is what I do,” he says. “It’s out of curiosity and a need to document the scene.” So he turned his eye to East L.A.’s workers, shoppers, the down-and-out, school children and street preachers.
1972, Los Angeles, California
One of his best known is Home Boys, (1972) two young men from the Aliso Village housing project by the monkey bars, staring intently into the camera. “It’s such an appealing piece,” says Durón. “One of the boys has a hat and they have their Pendletons and they’re acting tough. But you see their innocence. You wonder what happened to them and that bravado.”
The photo is best known as the cover of the book of the epic poem, I Am Joaquin.
Another favorite of Garza and Durón is this story’s lead photo, Sueño (1972) where a blind man sleeps on bus bench and the sign in the window behind him reads “Se Hacen Alteraciones (We Make Alterations). “It was an instantaneous gut reaction,” say Garza. “I was struck by the serenity of this man sitting in mid-day and dozing with his cane and l imagine thinking about his youth.”
A Curator’s Perspective
Curator Armando Durón and Garza have a long history. “I’ve been aware of his work for a long time. When I was in high school, we visited the La Raza office and all came home with a copy of the magazine.”
Durón has picked the photos for all of Garza’s shows, drawing from a catalogue of over 8,000 shots. And Garza is thrilled with the collaboration. “I don’t see what a curator sees,” says Garza, “and I don’t intervene. I refer to Armando as my ‘vision therapist” and he is about to dig into my psyche.”
“What catches my eye is the artistic quality of his work,” says Durón. “Many of his photos were created for a newspaper/magazine at a political time. He often didn’t have time to think, capturing a moment during a demonstration (like a women’s liberation march down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan or the Young Lords, advocating for Puerto Rican independence and marching for basic rights in East Harlem). But beyond the documentary aspect, the aesthetic composition takes the photos to a whole different level. I use the term ‘accidental aesthetics’ to describe it.”
Mexican American couple pose at home in front of the Virgen de Guadalupe
Stylish salespeople in front of a jewelry store at 5th Street and Broadway in downtown LA.
Durón’s unique organization of the show has the photos arranged in pairs, not arranged according to place or chronology. Instead, images are joined to encourage the viewer to form new images from the combination and create a dialogue between the viewer and image,” says Durón.
“I just lay everything out on the rug and just kind of start playing,” says Durón of the process. “I have a basic concept of who’s best at speaking to whom.”
After Riverside, the exhibition will embark on a national tour.
“The Other Side of Memory: Photographs by Luis C. Garza” is on display in the Art Alliance Gallery at Riverside Art Museum, 425 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside through Sunday, March 19. The museum is open from 10 a.m., -5 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday. For tickets and more information, visit riversideartmuseum.org.
Steve Simmons is an accomplished writer and editor who writes about a wide array of topics including entertainment. His successful experience at The Beverly Hills Courier and other publications set the stage for his blog. Contact Steve at steve.simmons0211@gmail.com or 626-788-6734.
