Traversing Intimate Spaces: The Photography of Fabian Guerrero
Self Portrait: Fabian Guerrero.
In the seemingly endless landscape of the U.S. and Mexico border, cultures converge to create a hybrid identity. For queer Mexican American photographer Fabian Guerrero, traversing through these spaces, both real and imagined, are central to his work that document the diversity of the Mexican American experience in the U.S.
Guerrero was born in Texas but spent his adolescence frequently crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. He lived in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas until the age of 7, where he recalls the variety of sensations that remind him of that experience, from the smell of burning wood and leaves to the rough texture of his grandmother’s colorful cobijas. Although he moved constantly as a child, his family finally settled outside of Dallas, Texas.
“My family was constantly migrating and trying to settle down,” Guerrero said during an interview at a coffee shop in Los Angeles where the artist is now based. “My house ultimately provided a space where family and friends would come and go as they migrated to the states.”
The experience of migrating back and forth between Mexico and the U.S. as a child and watching his extended family make the same journey created an environment which instilled in the young artist a fascination with documenting the lives and transformations of first-generation Mexican Americans, which are often excluded from the dominant narrative of the American experience.
Through the process of traversing spaces with his photography, Guerrero explores the multiple layers that exist within the Mexican American experience by highlighting the intersectionality of navigating multiple identities, which include being queer, brown, working-class and first-generation.
“Queer Brown Ranchero” series by Fabian Guerrero (Model: José Hernandez)
Guerrero’s “Queer Brown Ranchero” series explores this intersectionality on an intimate level that first caught my attention as a graduate student looking for queer representations in Latinx art. Like Guerrero, I was raised by an immigrant parent from Mexico in a small town in Texas. As a teenager, I remember going to local dances where the men would wear cowboy boots, tight denim jeans, vaquero button shirts and the iconic Tejano hat. I always longed to enter these spaces to feel part of a community, but since I was queer, I felt excluded from an attire that seemed reserved as a marker of masculine heteronormativity.
Seeing the images of Guerrero’s “Queer Brown Ranchero” series took me back to my adolescence in Texas. I was able to reimagine those moments not as an outsider but as a fundamental part of my identity where I could adorn an attire that was symbolic of my Mexican American roots while being unashamed of being queer. His images, however, are not so much a longing for assimilation into masculine heteronormativity; rather, they are an expression of a new space in which notions of masculinity, Mexican American identity, and queerness itself can be challenged and reimagined to reflect the reality of everyday life.
“When I tell my story through my photographs, it can resonate with others who have a similar background” Guerrero said. “The way we live in this country, how we survive in these spaces—this is our history that is a big part of us, which often doesn’t get written or talked about. When we are portrayed, it’s all the same old stuff. We are often represented as one-dimensional caricatures, but we are much more complex than that.”
As a photographer, Guerrero is a natural storyteller and by documenting queer brown men in this series, others can connect to his work on a deeper level by seeing themselves portrayed in his work.
“That’s the most beautiful part for me as an artist,” Guerrero said. “When I see other queer brown folk connecting to the images and feeling inspired to wear their Tejana hat and owning it. For someone who grew up in a small town, it might seem unimaginable that there are other queer brown men out there just like them.”
For one of the photographs in the series, Guerrero recreates an intimate moment of his life by using his father’s shirt as an object, which is symbolic of his cultural background and being raised primarily by his father. Through this rendition, the sentimental object is given a new life and meaning for the artist as it is now worn by a queer body.
“I wanted to bring an element of home to represent a tender moment,” Guerrero said. “When I touch the fabric of that shirt, I think about the moments when they [his family] would wear them and the stories about their lives at that moment. It brings back a lot of memories.”
For Guerrero, the family history that is embodied in certain objects and articles of clothing is central to his work as a photographer, as many of his photographs recreate moments that remind him of his family, from the loving relationship with his father to the trauma of migration and dealing with issues of masculinity as an openly queer man.
Guerrero said there were moments growing up that he felt ashamed of his background. Growing up in Texas he remembers being called a wetback for listening to Norteño music and wearing Mexican boots. He understands that for some Mexican Americans who might be third or fourth generation and grew up in a more urban environment, the ranchero/Norteño aesthetic might not resonate with them or hold any deeper meaning.
“I felt embarrassed when I was younger,” Guerrero said. “But now I’m like fuck that, I’m going to own this. Being queer, I’m able to represent so many layers of myself, either the boy from the hood or the boy from the Norte part of Mexico.”
For Guerrero, queerness can be expressed in multiple ways that cannot be categorized into one simple narrative. Although the Norteño/ranchero style is still a big part of his image, he’s able to express himself in a variety of ways that challenges the ways in which Mexican American males are seen that blur the lines between masculinity and femininity.
“When I’m wearing baggy pants and an oversized shirt, I’ll throw on some body glitter or wear lip gloss and if I’m wearing a Tejana shirt, I make sure to wear it super tight and leave my chest open,” Guerrero said with a laugh. “It’s powerful how these clothes and objects become performative when we combine articles of clothing from our past and make them into something new.”
Latinx people in the U.S. are often portrayed as a monolith that erases the diversity, complexity, and reality of the various communities that make up the larger Latinx community. Guerrero’s photographs offer a snapshot of a part of the Mexican Americans experience in Texas, but as the artist emphasized, not all Mexican Americans dress like Norteños or wear boots. Guerrero is also interested in exploring the queer Latinx punk, goth, and cholo scene, in addition to the various ways in which the queer brown experience continues to transform.
“I feel like I’m still in the beginning of my work,” Guerrero said. “When I tell the stories of my community, I want to make sure that they’re being seen through the lens of another brown person.”
Although Guerrero’s work embodies an impressive array of projects that recently include a photo shoot of Ricky Martin and his husband for Out Magazine, he said his next step is returning home to a small town on the U.S.-Mexico border to document the queer brown experience in rural America outside of the larger urban centers like New York City and Los Angeles, which tend to be the central focus of the Latinx experience in the U.S.
For the artist, the “Queer Brown Ranchero” series developed from a desire to see a representation of his experience that wasn’t portrayed within the dominant Mexican American or queer narrative. For myself, Guerrero’s photographs beautifully capture the moments of my adolescence in rural Texas and remind me that I was not alone, that we can be both unapologetically queer and brown in spaces where we have often been excluded, and that there is a community out there where we will be loved and accepted.
“There’s still much to be done when it comes to representation,” Guerrero said. “For the queer brown boys out there like me, I want to continue to portray images of us in a beautiful way that show we are wanted and that we belong.”
Jorge Cruz is an incoming PhD student in Chicano/a Studies at UCLA and received his master’s degree in Latin American Studies from Cal State LA. His research explores queer representations in Latinx art. He is currently a summer intern at the Latinx Project.