Graciela Iturbide revisits the predominantly Mexican American community of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, home of the legendary White Fence gang. Under the gaze of famed Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, this project vividly portrays the lives of several residents of the Chicano community in Boyle Heights, located in Eastside Los Angeles. The title refers to the historical street gang known as White Fence that has held established territory in Boyle Heights since 1900. They were one of the most violent Eastside gangs of the 20th century and among the first to use weapons.
On May 2, 1986, images were captured that gave rise to the book A Day in the Life of America. Graciela Iturbide formed part of the team of photographers who, over the course of twenty-four hours, registered everyday life in different locations across the United States. Her contribution to the time capsule was a portrait taken in an apartment in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, California. There, she was welcomed by a group of Mexican Americans who were mostly deaf women with ties to the White Fence gang.
That initial encounter set the stage for a long-standing friendship as well as the composition of a photographic tale that could very well be described as the intermittent chronicle of a day prolonged for thirty-three years, from 1986 to 2019.
The present edition, comprised of two volumes, offers a selection of the portraits Iturbide took of her Angelino hosts as well as their surroundings, movements, and connections. It features an essay by Alfonso Morales Carrillo describing both the development of this photographic series and the historic background it ultimately conveys: the formation and persistence of communities of Mexican descent north of the Rio Grande.
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Graciela Iturbide (1942) is a Mexican photographer. She enrolled in 1969 at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, where she studied film directing and still photography. She first trained in photography with Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Starting as his student at the Centro de Estudios Cinematográficos at National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), then becoming his studio assistant from 1970 to 1971, Iturbide absorbed Bravo’s poetic style but simultaneously developed her own approach to the photo essay.