William Camargo: Negotiated Frontiers
January 14th - May 14th, 2021, curated by Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez
In Negotiated Frontiers, photo-based artist William Camargo brings together selections from three bodies of work that negotiate space and interrogate the artist’s positionality while aiming to deconstruct the photographic canon. Using photography, installation, political public performances, and community archiving, this exhibition re-evaluates a photographic history that continuously omits or tokenizes BIPOC and Queer perspectives in the medium. The exhibition takes its title from the essay “Negotiated Frontiers: Contemporary Chicano Photography” by Jennifer A. González, originally published in 1995.
The virtual exhibition opens with selections from As Far As I Can Get, a response that challenges the privilege of running while white and not seen as suspect in John Divola’s As Far As I Could Get. Following that are selections from the long-term research project Origins & Displacements, which includes performance, portraits, landscapes, and archived materials from the city of Anaheim. It ends with selections from All That I Can Carry, a more recent project born during the COVID-19 lockdown, in which the artist invoked a rasquachismo sensibility by utilizing what was at hand in their household to create new artwork. The exhibition provides viewers with an experience of the artist’s creative process, inspired by photography theory, activism, and their homelife in Anaheim.
*for best viewing, please access the exhibition from your desktop
"What does it mean to have, or indeed to be with, an image of oneself? How is that image constructed? How is that image controlled? To have an image implies the rights of ownership. To be with an image implies a relation of cooperation, community."
- Negotiated Frontiers: Contemporary Chicano Photography by Jennifer A. González
Image descriptions: A cluster of four images of the artist running away from the camera in different outside locations in Anaheim. The first image shows the artist running in a parking lot with surrounding trees. The second image is in black and white, and shows the artist running in an alley. The third image shows the artist running in a parking lot. The fourth image is in black and white, and shows the artist about to climb a wall after running toward it, with palm trees in the background.
“There is almost always another photograph waiting just beyond our attention span, on the next page, further down the screen, along the gallery wall, or up the street. Looking at photographs is very often a matter of displacement, from one image to the next.”
- David Campany, On Photography
Image Description: A horizontal photograph that has two men to the right of it, one walking and one sitting. The building has red letters and there are several shadows made by palm trees.
Image Description: A photograph of Benji standing in front of a building that has a Virgin Mary painted and he is surrounded by several yellow posts.
“... it becomes increasingly evident that contemporary art photography is driven by the astute and active choices of its makers, whose works maintain the brilliantly dialogical nature of an art form within the ever-shifting wider photographic landscape. More than this, we perhaps see more clearly the extent to which artist-photographers make their work in conscious resistance to and questioning of the mainstream ideas and uses of photography, and collectively protect at least one arena where the basic democracy of photography preserves the right to observe and to be seen, and to articulate personal narratives and human stories.”
The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton
“The war was on between two contenders, neither of whom had a deed to the land.”
We Fed Them Cactus by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca
Image Description: A horizontal image of a tree, that shows mostly the roots and half of them in shadow.
Image Description: An image of Araceli standing up while holding a chicken and behind her is several bushes and trees.
“New formations of photography’s previously orthodox history are indeed possible if we read photography through different political temporalities and cultural perspectives within the constructs of race and time.”
Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time by Mark Sealy
Image Descriptions: A cluster of four images of the artist holding signs. The first sign reads “This area will gentrify soon.” The second sign reads “On this side of the wall is a predominantly brown working class neighborhood.” The third sign reads “Brown women used to pack oranges here.” The fourth sign reads “Anaheim police is the 9th most violent department in the US.”
Image description: A photograph of Jose, the artist’s father, receiving a haircut, and is wearing a black trash bag. The image is in black and white.
"One needs to stop looking at the photograph and instead start watching it."
The Civil Contract of Photography by Ariella Azoulay
Image description: A horizontal image of a white dirty table with an orange, margarines, margarine peels, a comb, brown box and a headband.
Image description: A photo of Ananda standing between two trees. He is wearing jeans and a white shirt. The image is in black and white.
Image description: An image with several paper advertisements that tear off. The papers are in white, pink, red, and yellow.
“Rasquachismo is a sensibility that is not elevated and serious but playful and elemental. It finds delight and refinement in what many consider banal, and projects an alternative aesthetic—a sort of good taste of bad taste.”
Rasquachismo by Tomás Ybarra-Frausto
Image Description: A cluster of four images of the artist holding household items in front of their house, with some items on their head. The first image shows the artist holding a chair, an exercise ball, and a bag, with a chair and a mop over their head, and the artist’s mother is seen in a nearby window. The second image shows the artist holding a plastic pool, a family portrait, and buckets. The third image shows the artist holding a blanket with a black panther on it. The fourth image shows the artist carrying a red toy car and a red gasoline container, with a red milk cart over their head.
"By looking at pictures we imagine that we can know who we are and who we were. Though the fashioning of one's self image may be most frequently associated with family snapshots or portraits, the endeavor to see, and thus to know oneself is also a public, communal activity."
- Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self edited by Coco Fusco and Brian Wallis
Resources & Bibliography
Books
González, Jennifer A., C. Ondine Chavoya, Chon Noriega, and Terezita Romo, eds. Chicano and Chicana Art: A Critical Anthology. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.
Dávila, Arlene. Latinx Art: Artists, Markets, and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
Cotton, Charlotte. The Photograph as Contemporary Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2020.
Sealy, Mark. Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2019.
Campany, David. On Photographs. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020.
Cabeza de Baca, Fabiola. We Fed Them Cactus. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.
Noriega, Chon A., ed. From the West: Chicano Narrative Photography. San Francisco: Mexican Museum, 1995.
Fusco, Coco, and Brian Wallis, eds. Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self. New York: Harry Abrams Inc., 2003.
Archive Images
Interior view of the Orange Belt Fruit Distributors packing house in Anaheim; image shows four women packers, identified (left to right) as Marcella Gomez, Chonita Veyna, unknown, unkown; visible is a Three Star brand citrus crate label. ca. 1940
Photo from the 1920's in Anaheim courtesy of the Anaheim Heritage Center
An aerial photograph of Disneyland in 1948.
Related Interviews
kitchen table covers usually found in Latinx neighborhoods, courtesy of the artist
KCET, William Camargo’s Lens Brings Focus to Obscured Histories in Orange County by Janica Michelle Martinez Torres
kitchen table covers usually found in Latinx neighborhoods, courtesy of the artist
Art Journal Issue #79, Regarding Family Photography in Contemporary Latinx Art by Deanna Ledezma
kitchen table covers usually found in Latinx neighborhoods, courtesy of the artist
About the Artist
William Camargo is an Arts Educator, Photo-Based Artist and Arts Advocate born and raised in Anaheim, California, he is currently serving as Commissioner of Heritage and Culture in the city of Anaheim and holds an M.F.A at Claremont Graduate University. He is the founder and curator of Latinx Diaspora Archives an archive Instagram page that elevates communities of color through family photos. He attained his BFA at the California State University, Fullerton, and an AA from Fullerton College in photography.
William has held residencies at Project Art, the Chicago Artist Coalition, ACRE, and at LA Summer held at Otis School of Art and Design. He has also participated in the New York Times Portfolio Review, NALAC's(National Association of Latino Arts & Culture) Leadership(2018), and Advocacy(2020) Institutes. He is a current member of Diversify Photo an initiative started to diversify the photography industry. He was awarded the Friedman Grant and J. Sonneman Photography Prize from CGU and has given lectures at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Gallery 400(Chicago), University of San Diego, Cal State Long Beach, the Claremont Colleges, USC Roski School of Art, Stanford(upcoming).
Additionally, his work has been shown at the Chicago Cultural Center, Loisaida Center(New York), the University of Indianapolis(IN), Mexican Cultural Center and Cinematic Arts(Los Angeles), Stevenson University(Baltimore), The Cooper Gallery of African and African American Arts at Harvard, Irvine Fine Arts Center, Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, Filter Photo(Chicago), among others.
William is located in Southern California. @billythecamera
Image courtesy William Camargo
Photo Credit: Lester Guijarro @thebeardednomaad
About the Curator
Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez is an independent curator specializing in photography, film, video, new media, and intermedia. She has worked at The National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Video Data Bank. She holds an MA in Film Studies from The University of Iowa and a BA from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she is currently based in Chicago. @curadoraboricua
Related Programs
The State of Latinx Photography
February 19th 2021 @ 12-1:10pm, ZOOM
In Convo: Marissa Del Toro & William Camargo
April 14th 2021 @ 1-2:10pm, ZOOM
Interview: William Camargo & Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez
William Camargo introduces his practice as the incoming A.I.R. of the season