Considered in America as the father of Chicano photography, Louis Carlos Bernal (1941-1993) knew how to raise vernacular photography to the rank of art. No doubt it is his resolutely sociological et critique who led him to take portraits otherwisethus leaving aside any aesthetic cliché to write a history of the community of Barrios (popular neighborhoods in Spanish).
By putting oneself photographically au service of the people whose portrait he draws, Louis Carlos Bernal operates a double artistic movement: he responds to a strong need to document a population often left on the margins, using photography to give them back a certain dignity.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Pink Wedding Portrait1978; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of the Mexican American Legal Defense and EducationalA photographic life
Difficult to mention work by Louis Carlos Bernal without mentioning it is knownas the two are so closely linked. It is no surprise that we discover that he spent his entire life in the state of Arizona, border with Mexico. After growing up in Douglas, then in Phoenix, the state capital, he joined the University of Tucson in 1972 – he was 31 years old at the time – to devote himself entirely to his photographic work, alone or in a group.
Louis Carlos Bernal, QuinceaneraPhoenix, Arizona, 1981; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Purchase.The end of the 1970s appears as decisive in his career: with four other photographers (Morrie Camhi, Abigail Heyman, Roger Minick and Neal Slavin), he received financial assistance from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund to document the daily life of Latino communities. The photographs were the subject of an exhibition and a book entitled “ESPEJO: Reflections of the Mexicans American” (1978) which achieved international visibility.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Nanita MendiblesBarrio Anita, 1978; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of the Mexican American Legal Defense and EducationalIt must be said that Latino communities are then highly invisible in the United States, all the more so in a twentieth century which does not yet attach much importance to the question of minorities. This is why the work of Louis Carlos Bernal appears as salutaryby fully registering in the movement for civil rights which then grew across the country.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Santos y Television, Mexico, 1981; from LouisCarlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and
Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of
Arizona: Louis Carlos Bernal Archive.
How ? By operating a step aside compared to his contemporaries, notably the activist team of The Racewho did documentary photography a tool of protest and movement. Louis Carlos Bernal is more involved in long-term work, a detailed portrait of its community ; it’s certain, no activism – although – but more the daily life of Barrios and its inhabitants.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Mexican Escapade1974; from the series An American Fairy Tale; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Louis Carlos Bernal Archive.everyday life : intergenerational portrait
The singularity of Louis Carlos Bernal’s portraits resides in the frame that surrounds the people he photographs. In their privacy. At home, here they are surrounded by family photos, memories, shrines, candles, flowers… so many elements that compose the portrait, in the same way as a face, of cultural signs of a legacy which is transmitted despite emigration and a certain distance.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Martinez Brothers in Candy StoreDouglas, Arizona, 1978; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.This is where resides the great strength of the work of Louis Carlos Bernal: the “portrait within the portrait”, as a way of crossing generations. The people he photographs are like framed by their family and cultural memory; surrounded by family photos, with faded colors; L’privacy of a living room or bedroom functions as a developer. Neither photography documentarynor photography vernacularLouis Carlos Bernal fits into another register – probably unclassifiable – from which he draws a true state of grace.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Juanita Serrano with Santo Niño de Atocha1978; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Louis Carlos Bernal Archive.This framework within the framework is verified within its own compositionswhich he masters perfectly. A bed, a window, a table, a door; it is with the help of strong lines and rectilinear that he highlights his models, in leader looking at faces, at eyes, whether outdoors or indoors.
everyday life is captured in all its beauty, and above all all its urgency. The urgency to document a daily life which tends to disappear within the Barriosfor many victims of urban renovations who level the houses and the stories they contain.
A referenced aesthetic
It’s in his color work that certainly resides aesthetic heritage by Louis Carlos Bernal. The direct lightmost of the time without artifice, is able to reveal the strong hues of vert, rouge, bleuwhich are arranged within his images in a remarkable balancegoing so far as to evoke the aesthetics of religious icons.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Helen1988; from the series Lubbock; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Louis Carlos Bernal Archive.It is also the case for square format of these color photographswhich he manages to energize by going to the essential despite the proliferation of elements or details, never trivial; as we have seen, they are always the reflection of the people photographed. The photography of Louis Carlos Bernal is also a testimony of a certain iconographyinfluenced by a whole aesthetic history of Mexican-American cultureof a visual memory which, if it had not been put into images, would undoubtedly have been lost.
Louis Carlos Bernal, CholosLogan Heights, San Diego, 1980; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of ArizonaA photographic history of the minority
Although the latinos and the chicanos part of the history of the United States from its beginnings, and that they represent a large part of its population, we can only note and deplore their absence quasi-total in artistic, cultural or popular representations. It is in this sense that Louis Carlos Bernal makes his practice a spotlight on a minorityby giving them dignity, by visually telling their story that is not usually told.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Two WomenDouglas, Arizona, 1978; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of Helen UnruhThe greatest photographic resource of the Latino and Chicano communities necessarily rests on family photos ; and, as we have seen, Louis Carlos Bernal draws inspiration from the codes of this vernacular photography to resituate it, to make something else out of it. It’s a job genealogical et sociological which it is undoubtedly about: Louis Carlos Bernal photographs those who cross borderstemporal and geographical.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Albert y Lynn MoralesSilver City, New Mexico, 1978; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of the artistAt a time of identity tensions in the West, of which America is not left out, say something about those who cross and those who survive seems more and more necessary. In the image, we can clearly see that it is a constant negotiation: between two cultures, between two countries, between two languages. Because there is not just one story to tell about minoritiesLouis Carlos Bernal makes the portrait something collective – like memory.
Louis Carlos Bernal, Two CholasTucson, Arizona, 1982; from Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024). © Lisa Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Louis Carlos Bernal Archive.It’s this diversity of representations which shines through his photographs. We thus move from one social class to another, following the distinctive signs of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat – or of a certain representation of femininity and masculinity.
A still living archive
A retrospective is currently organized at the CCP in Tucson from September 2024, accompanied by a new work Louis Carlos Bernal: Monographpublished recently published by Aperture. What, more than forty years after “ESPEJO”, put back Louis Carlos Bernal and the chicano photography in the spotlight.
Front cover of Louis Carlos Bernal: Monografía (Aperture, 2024); coverimage: Louis Carlos Bernal, Dos Mujeres, Douglas, Arizona, 1978. © Lisa
Bernal Brethour and Katrina Bernal. Courtesy Center for Creative
Photography, University of Arizona: Gift of Helen Unruh.
