On the Road to Tepeyac, Guadalupe’s Got Their Backs

Alinka Echeverría’s Photographs of Religious Pilgrims Question What an Image Really Is

Alinka Echeverría’s The Road To Tepeyac, a series of photographs of pilgrims to Mexico’s famed Basilica de Guadalupe, is an invitation to think about altars, embodiment, and visibility.

Alinka and I met on November 14, 2014, at the Berkeley Art Museum and spoke of many things, including her experience growing up in a small village in England, where her family relocated to from Mexico while her father completed his graduate degree. Alinka studied anthropology in Europe and began working as a documentary photographer but felt creatively stymied. Exhibiting her photographs, on …

In the Segregated 20th Century, Schoolchildren Embodied Black Uplift

How a Leading Portraitist Captured Their Refinement and Restlessness

For much of the 20th century, the Scurlock family of portrait photographers—first Addison Scurlock and his wife Mamie and then their sons Robert and George—were the premiere chroniclers of the …

A Story of the West

I am in a eucalyptus grove next to a playground. I am seven, or eight, my school is Catholic, and recess begins and ends with a bell that stings. You …

Ed Ruscha’s Wild West

For 50 Years and Counting, the Artist Has Reinterpreted What the West Means to America

In 1956, at the age of 18, Edward Joseph Ruscha IV left his home in Oklahoma and drove a 1950 Ford sedan to Los Angeles, where he hoped to attend …

L.A.’s Forgotten Avenue of the Athletes

Thirty-Two Grimy Bronze Plaques Are All That Remain of a Grand Vision to Create a Walk of Fame for Sports

Walking along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles the other day I stumbled across an old acquaintance. On a small bronze plaque embedded into the sidewalk was the name Jimmy …

Exposure

            After Ansel Adams’ “Moonrise Over Hernandez, New Mexico 1941″

Stood by the edge of the mountain, the day coming fully
to crows. Stood and the …