Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell

by Sybil Venegas (primary_contributor), Rebecca Epstein (Editor)

Laura Show and Tell surveys the career of Laura Aguilar, a Chicana photographer who is most widely known for black-and-white nude self-portraits that are frank and self-assertive, yet deeply sensitive and poetic. In photographs that are frequently political as well as personal, Aguilar offers candid portrayals of herself, her friends and family, and her Chicano/Latino and LBGT communities. Ten essays trace the development of Aguilar's work over three decades, exploring her photography in terms of its social, historical, and art historical contexts.

This catalog accompanies Laura Show and Tell , a retrospective at the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College. The exhibition is a collaboration between the museum and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, which houses the Laura Aguilar Collection of the artist's papers and photographs.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Art

240 pages, Hardcover

Published September 15, 2017

Reviews

[Max]

I love her photos. But given how much of her work grappled with how damaging and fractured the way others saw her were, all these essays that largely fall far short of attempting to respectfully meet her as a complete woman were disturbing. A lot of it functions to pull focus from what she made rather than help you experience her pictures more fully but it does leave you with a clearer idea what she’s talking about in her work criticizing the art world

[Kandace · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous, amazing collection of deep essays and a great compilation of large plates of several of Aguilar's series. A collection I will be returning to over and over again. The essay by Macarena Gómez-Barris was a particularly insightful look at the major impact of Aguilar's work as a decolonial project that grounds queer utopic possibilities.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laura Aguilar's work is outstanding. The essays in the book do not live up to her work.