Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell

Laura Aguilar: 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 LGBT 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 Aguilar: 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.

Rebecca Epstein oversees communications, public events, and academic programs at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

Sybil Venegas is an art historian, writer, independent curator, and professor emerita of Chicana/o studies at East Los Angeles College.