LOUIS CARLOS BERNAL’S BARRIOS: THE POLITICS OF DOMESTICITY IN THE WAKE OF THE CHICANO MOVEMENT

In 1978, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund commissioned five photographers to document Mexican American life in the American Southwest for an exhibition titled “ESPEJO.” Unlike other photographers included in the project, Louis Carlos Bernal turned his camera toward the domestic sphere, creating intimate, colorful documents of both people and interiors in the Mexican American communities of his native Arizona. This thesis examines how the political beliefs and strategies of the historical Chicano movement informed Bernal’s Barrios series. I argue that—through their portrayal of the home and its manifestations of cultural identity—the photographs reflect claims for Mexican American land ownership in the Southwest, an idea that was championed during the movement. While deeply informed about the historical Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which the “ESPEJO” project was a result of, Bernal avoided straightforward portrayals of Chicanx activism or struggle in his Barrios series. In this way, the series sought to define the legacy of the Chicano movement by picturing a Southwest wherein the movement’s goals had been realized.