UNTITLED

I’ve always been fascinated with subcultures, ever since carrying a 16-millimeter camera into a club in the late ‘70s to document what was then considered the most controversial youth movement: punk rock. As a teen, I was drawn to the music’s rebelliousness, but since then I’ve come to understand how subcultures can also operate on a much more complex aesthetic level, where the distinction between art and real life disappears.

Perhaps that’s why I responded so well to Graciela Iturbide’s show at the Getty Center. Iturbide is one of Mexico’s most beloved photographers, known for her social realist images. But I was particularly struck by her 1986 portfolio “East LA,” which depicts Latino gang members in L.A.’s White Fence barrio. Here, the men wear oversized shirts, cut-off chinos and hairnets, and the women sport feathered hair, ruched midriffs, pleated pants and sandals.

For me, the correlation between cholo styles and other youth styles, such as hip-hop and punk, are obvious. But spend any time with the additional 100-plus images, and you’ll undoubtedly realize how they represent only a single facet of Iturbide’s overall agenda, which is to explore Mexican selfhood. It doesn’t matter if she’s shooting pre-Hispanic cultures in Juchitan or poor residents living on the border, she always manages to tease out a similar sense of pride, a dash of the dangerous and plenty of poetry.

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