May 16, 2024

Aperture Releases Landmark Survey of Louis Carlos Bernal, Photographer at the Forefront of the Chicanx Art Movement

New York, May 16, 2024—Aperture announces the publication of Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía, the first major survey of the life and work of the pioneering Chicano photographer, whose work intimately portrays barrio communities in the Southwest United States during the 1970s and 1980s. Monografía is fully bilingual in English and Spanish, with definitive essays that illuminate Bernal’s singular portraiture and contextualize the importance of his contributions to American art history within the wake of the civil rights movement. Copublished by Aperture and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona, Tucson, the book will be followed by a major exhibition of over 125 of Bernal’s photographs to be held at CCP—the home of Bernal’s archive—from September 14, 2024, through March 15, 2025.

Embraced as the “father of Chicano art photography,” Louis Carlos Bernal (1941–1993) made photographs that draw upon the deep values of family, faith, and cultural traditions. For Bernal, photography was a powerful tool in affirming the value of individuals and communities who lacked visibility and agency. Working in both black and white and in color, he photographed the interiors of homes and their inhabitants, often presenting his subjects surrounded by the objects they lived with—framed portraits of family members, religious pictures and statuary, small Catholic shrines festooned with flowers, and elements of contemporary popular culture. Bernal viewed these spaces as rich with personal, cultural, and spiritual meaning, and his unforgettable photographs express a vision of la vida cotidiana—everyday life—as a state of grace.

Bernal studied at Phoenix College and Arizona State University before moving to Tucson, where he developed the photography program at Pima Community College. He traveled frequently to produce his work, both throughout the Southwest and also to Mexico City, where he participated in important photography conferences and befriended such leading photographers as Lola Álvarez Bravo, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and Graciela Iturbide. In the US, Bernal counted among his circle of peers figures such as Morrie Camhi, Luis Jimenez, Danny Lyon, W. Eugene Smith, John Valadez, and Ricardo Valverde. Bernal’s work was featured in watershed exhibitions including Ancient Roots/New Visions, one of the first nationally touring shows of Latinx art featuring work by eighty artists such as Ana Mendieta, Lorenzo Homar, and Patssi Valdez, originating in 1977 at the Tucson Museum of Art; Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA), originating in 1990 at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Wight Gallery, traveling for nearly three years to museums in ten cities, with work of 180 Chicanx artists and considered a major milestone in Chicanx art history; and The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s, with artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barbara Kruger, James Luna, and Lorna Simpson. Bernal was also featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at museums and venues in the United States, Mexico, and Europe, including presentations at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, El Museo del Barrio, Galería de la Raza, and many others.

Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía is authored by Elizabeth Ferrer with an additional essay by Rebecca Senf, and includes a detailed bibliography, chronology, and exhibition history. Monografía is available at aperture.org/books.

Louis Carlos Bernal (born in Douglas, Arizona, 1941; died in Tucson, 1993) was a pioneering Chicano photographer active in the last quarter of the twentieth century, maturing as an artist in the wake of the 1970s civil rights era. After completing his MFA at Arizona State University in 1972, he joined the faculty of Pima Community College in Tucson, where he developed and led its photography program, and remained for the duration of his career. Honors received during his career include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and selection for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, with his project focused on the labor behind the spectacle of the Games. The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson, preserves the Louis Carlos Bernal Archive, including fine prints, project records, correspondence, and clippings. Bernal’s work is also represented in museum collections including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and Arizona State University.

Elizabeth Ferrer is a writer, curator, and arts activist. She is the former vice president of contemporary art at BRIC in Brooklyn. Ferrer is the author of Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History (2020) and curator of the retrospective of Bernal’s work opening at the Center for Creative Photography, in Tucson.

Rebecca Senf is chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson. She is author of Reconstructing the View: The Grand Canyon Photographs of Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe (2012), Betsy Schneider: To Be Thirteen (2017), Making a Photographer: The Early Work of Ansel Adams (2020), and editor of Richard Avedon: Relationships (2022).

Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía was supported, in part, by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.

About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs, Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from 7G Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Documentary Arts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Ishibashi Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Henry Luce Foundation, Mailman Foundation, MurthyNAYAK Foundation, Grace Jones Richardson Trust, San Francisco Foundation, Thomas R. Schiff Foundation, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Stuart B. Cooper and R. L. Besson, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, Thomas and Susan Dunn, Michael Sonnenfeldt, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts, with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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Press Contact
Lauren Van Natten, +1 212.946.7151, publicity@aperture.org