Today we have lost a powerful, poetic Chicana photographer: Laura Aguilar (1959–2018). Long under-recognized by mainstream institutions, Aguilar's work just recently had a revival in popularity not only due to her extraordinary, traveling retrospective, Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell [initially at the Vincent Price Museum of Art and currently on view at the Frost Art Museum], but also due to the inclusion of her work in several important group shows, such as Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative.
Born with auditory dyslexia, which made speaking difficult, Aguilar used photography as a crucial outlet of self-expression. As a lesbian woman of color, it is no surprise that Aguilar's work focused on members of marginalized communities, including LGBTQ, Latinx, the working class, overweight people and those with learning disabilities. She considered herself to be a part of a “hidden subculture” within another subculture, and her work explored this struggle with double identity often by using her own unconventional body often as the subject as well as a symbol.
Here is an article by Artnews commemorating the artist:
Laura Aguilar, Compassionate Photographer of Marginalized Groups, Dies at 58, by Maximilíano Durón
EXPLORE HER WORK ON SVA IMAGE LIBRARY: