Beyond the Frame - The Art of Chicano Photography
Featured Book
Chicano Camera Culture
Examines the depth and evolution of Chicana/o/x lens-based image-making Published to accompany a major exhibition of the same title, this volume surveys some 150 works by nearly fifty US Chicana/o/x artists. It moves thematically and intergenerationally, spanning from early activist photographers shooting in the 1960s and ’70s to contemporary artists of subsequent generations, whose work builds on this powerful legacy. The exhibition was organized by the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum in 2026 and curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, the leading scholar of Latinx photography in the United States. Spanning the 1960s to the present day, Chicano Camera Culture is the first publication to survey the entire history of photography by Chicano artists based throughout the United States. The generously illustrated book includes original scholarship from such leading scholars as Elizabeth Ferrer, Jennifer A. González, Deanna Ledezma, Nicole F. Scalissi, Mary Thomas, and Charlene Villaseñor Black. Their essays underscore the significant, historically overlooked role that Chicano photographers have played in advancing aesthetic and technical innovations in the photographic medium. The book also reveals the priority that photographers have placed on portraiture, on the representation of self and others as a means of conveying individual and collective identities.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
Join us for a conversation with the artists and curator behind Chicano Camera Culture, an exhibition highlighting the last six decades of Chicano photography. The exhibit, which is currently on display at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, spans from early activist photographers to contemporary artists. Moderated by artist and art historian Josh T. Franco, the conversation features:
- Elizabeth Ferrer, the exhibit’s curator and the leading scholar of Latinx photography in the U.S.
- Thalía Gochez, a self-taught Los Angeles photographer of Mexican-Salvadoran heritage whose film-based portraits transform cultural identity into acts of love and community
- Deanna Ledezma, a Tejanx scholar who offers critical context on the visual and political traditions uniting Chicano artists across generations
- Diana Solís, a Chicago-based documentary photographer whose decades of work in the city's Latino neighborhoods anchor the exhibition's intergenerational scope
Together, the panelists will explore the significant, historically overlooked role that Chicano photographers have played in advancing aesthetic and technical innovations in photography.
Featured Author
Elizabeth Ferrer
Elizabeth Ferrer is a New York-based curator and writer, and one of the nation's leading scholars of Latinx photography. Ferrer is the author of Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History, the first comprehensive survey of the field, as well as of a monograph on the Chicano photographer Louis Carlos Bernal, named as one of the best art books of the year in 2024 by The New York Times.
Presenters
Thalia Gochez
Thalia Gochez is a Los Angeles–based Mexican Salvadoran American photographer, creative director, and stylist whose work centers identity, memory, and community through intimate portraiture and visual storytelling. Her practice celebrates the beauty, resilience, and lived experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, with a particular focus on Latina women, immigrant communities, and the people who have shaped her own life. Through photography, Gochez explores themes of belonging, cultural inheritance, and self-representation, creating images that are both deeply personal and universally resonant. Her editorial and commercial clients include Apple, Nike, Rare Beauty, Levi's, Google, and Ceremonia, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, i-D, Vogue, and The FADER. Gochez's photographs are also featured in Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966–2026, the landmark exhibition at the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, highlighting a new generation of artists expanding the visual language of Chicano photography.
Deanna Ledezma
Deanna Ledezma is a Tejanx scholar, educator, and curator specializing in the history and theory of photography and contemporary Latinx art. She holds a PhD in art history and serves as the Writing Lab Director of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative. New and forthcoming publications include exhibition catalog essays in Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966-2026 (University of Washington Press), Sophie Rivera: Double Exposures (Aperture), and Carmen Lomas Garza: Picturing the Familiar (Arizona State University Art Museum), as well as a book chapter in Feminist Visual Solidarities and Kinships (Rutgers University Press). Working in artistic collaboration with Josh Rios and Anthony Romero, she co-founded the Place as Practice Research Collective. Their gallery exhibitions include The place where the creek goes underground (Harvard Radcliffe Institute, 2024) and Not So Much in Words: Kinship Citations (Dartmouth College, 2026). To learn more, please visit: www.deannaledezma.com and www.placeaspractice.com.
Diana Solís
Diana Solís (she/they) is a Mexican-born photographer, multidisciplinary artist, and educator whose work practice includes painting, illustration, public murals, and installation. She is inspired by Mexican and Chicano culture, memory, cautionary tales, oral and personal histories, queer identities, and narratives. Her work examines notions of place, identity, and belonging. As a documentary photographer, Solís has created a vast and ongoing visual archive of LGBTQ+, Latinx, and feminist communities and movements from Chicago to Mexico City. In 2022, parts of this work titled “Diana Solís: Intimacies in Resistance” were presented by Ariel Goldberg in their lecture and essay “Lucid knowledge: The Currency of the Photographic Image,” Triennial of Photography Hamburg (DE). Recent exhibitions include “Images on which to build, 1970s – 1990s”, FotoFocus Biennial (Cincinnati); “Diana Solís: Encuentros Photographs of Chicago Poetry Communities, 1978 – 1994, Poetry Foundation (Chicago). Images on which to build, 1970’s – 1990’s are currently on exhibit at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (NYC). Solís's latest photographic work-in-progress, using portraiture and documentary genres, centers on the broadening definitions of kinship and extended family through the lives of close friends and members of her community. Central to Solís's practice is a commitment to being a teaching artist and to sharing and collaborating with the people around her. Solís’ social practice of education work began in the 1970s when working with Chicago Pilsen’s iconic Casa Aztlan and Mujeres Latinas en Acción. In the years since, she has taught students of diverse backgrounds and ages in community organizations, public schools, museums, and special residency programs. During the COVID pandemic, Solis’ photography practice found new life in the empty streets of Pilsen. Solís developed her newest photo essay, Luz: Seeing the Space Between Us. It was published as a limited edition artist book by Flatlands Press in November 2022.
Josh T. Franco
Josh T. Franco, PhD is collector at large at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. He is the Executive Director of the US LatinX Art Forum. He first joined the Archives as Latino collections specialist (2015-2017). Before joining the Smithsonian, he worked as an artist guide at the Judd Foundation, located at 101 Spring Street, while completing his PhD in art history at Binghamton University, SUNY.
About the Venue
National Museum of Mexican Art
Presented by Chicago Humanities
Presented with Seminary Co-Op Bookstore
Pilsen
1852 W 19th St
Chicago, IL 60608
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