Ben “Easy” Rider, “An Informal Chat with Louis Carlos Bernal,” 1982

Описание: "My images convey the spiritual and cultural values of the Chicano experience." —Louis Carlos Bernal

In this interview with filmmaker Ben Rider, Louis Carlos Bernal discusses themes in his photographic work.

Born in Douglas, Arizona, and based in Tucson, Louis Carlos Bernal (1941–1993) was a pioneering Chicano photographer. He was among the first to view photography not just as documentation but as an art form. Beginning his career in the early 1970s, following the Chicano civil rights movement, Bernal took a quietly political approach to his work, aiming to celebrate the strength, spiritual and cultural values, and profound family ties of marginalized Mexican Americans. Initially focusing on the people of modest means he encountered in the barrios of Tucson, the city where he lived and taught, Bernal eventually traveled to small towns throughout the Southwest, where he portrayed individuals and families in outdoor settings or in their homes surrounded by belongings, tabletops filled with religious statuary and curios, and at times, rooms absent of people that nevertheless express the tenor of the lives lived within them. 

The Center for Creative Photography presents "Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva," a landmark survey of one of the most significant American photographers of the twentieth century, on view in the Center Galleries, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 1030 N. Olive Rd., Tucson, Arizona from September 14, 2024 to March 15, 2025.

Louis Carlos Bernal Archive, 1953-1993. AG 182. Center for Creative Photography. University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. ©️ Ben Rider.