Center for Creative Photography

This is a color photograph of a Latina woman wearing black clothing sitting on a red loveseat beneath a fabric wall hanging with a portrait of one of the Kennedy brothers (Robert Kennedy?) between the United States flag and an image of the Statue of Liberty.  The overall composition is roughly triangular, with the loveseat at the bottom of the triangle, and the black background of the wall hanging forming the apex.  This shape is reinforced by objects on the floor that lean against the wall at an angle, creating the effect of wider base.  The apex of the triangular composition (the wall hanging) is framed between a wall planter on the left, and blown-glass light fixture on the right.

As noted above, the composition of the photograph is roughly triangular.  The bottom third of the image is cluttered with various domestic objects, whereas the wall hanging at the apex of the composition is simplified, symbolic and abstract.  Nonetheless, it is the bottom third of the image, the foreground, that is occupied by three-dimensional objects and the person who is the subject of the photograph.  The wall hanging depicts a powerful political figure with conventional 'American' symbols, but is two-dimensional.  The human subject in the image, ostensibly an "ordinary" person,  a Chicana woman, is the true center --the source from which the rest of the composition takes its shape.

Louis Carlos Bernal is renowned for his photographs documenting everyday life in Chicanx communities in the Southwestern United States.  This photograph fits in the genres of photodocumentary/photojournalism but also acts to convey a symbolic commentary on the position and role of Chicanx communities in U.S. society as a whole.  

The portrait of one of the Kennedys references a kind of "American mainstream" political idealism that had started to fade --with increasing rapidity-- in 1978, when this photograph was taken. Further, the Kennedy family has become a kind of trope for the rise of immigrant, Roman Catholic, Americans against a nativist, protestant political establishment.  

But the true center of the photograph, Ms. Siqueiros, belongs to a community that was (is) still marginalized in the "American mainstream", despite living in North America for centuries longer than the Kennedys.  Ultimately, the details of life in Barrio Anita carry more weight and power in the composition than symbols of political fame.

This photograph belongs to multiple contexts: it is one of many taken by Bernal to document Chicanx communities.  As such, one might choose to evaluate it within the overall collection/selection of these images.  The striking balance between the day-to-day and the symbolic in the image would be shaped by --and in turn would shape-- Bernal's broader depiction of barrio life.  

The photograph is currently exhibited, however, as part of an "in-progress think tank" about the broader role of photojournalism in U.S. history.  In this context, I think viewers may be thrown into more of a "close reading" mode.  While this allows rich interpretation of the image, as noted above, such an interpretation seems less "full" than one that situates it in Bernal's original project.  

Part of the photograph's success as a journalistic image stems from provoking the viewer's interest in "fuller" interpretive contexts.