Christina Fernandez sees herself as equally artist and storyteller, one who employs photography to explore social and physical isolation and estrangement within marginalized communities while experimenting with composition and form. Her art is shaped by the concerns that powered the Chicano movement and the aesthetics and discourses of postmodernism. As she considers the questions and ideas that absorb her, Fernandez moves between landscape and portraiture, but she revises the visual language to suit her purpose, producing works that are deeply thoughtful and engaging.
This exhibition catalog examines the Los Angeles–based photographer’s work since the late 1980s. Among these works are María’s Great Expedition, in which the artist photographs herself as her immigrant grandmother, and the Lavanderia series, photographs created from layered images that offer glimpses into Eastside LA laundromats and the lives of their customers. The volume’s six essays are supplemented with excerpts from three interviews with the artist. Together, they offer critical perspectives on Fernandez’s radical intellectual and formal agenda and reveal the multiple senses of “exposure” that are at play in her art.
