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.