José Galvez

My photography feels organic to me, arising from my very blood. From the moment I bought my first pawn-store camera as a teenager, I pivoted to capture my barrio, my familia, and our everyday lives. Other subject matter, even for the years I worked as a newspaper photographer covering all sorts of stories, never much interested me. These photographs only, of Latinos in America, are the true extension of my self. My approach is simple. I seek to honor the moment. I want to capture it without disturbing it, altering it, or embellishing it. I use spare amounts of film. I have to react quickly while blending into the background. I rely on the largess of the people I photograph to allow me to enter their private moments. I respect that by not drawing attention to myself. Doing this exclusively over the past 40 years has also given me a purpose beyond my own life span. I am creating an historical record: the long view of what Latino life has been like across the United States across the decades. Through photographs taken at various times in a multitude of places, but all here in this country, I have been studying our behavior. How do new immigrants adapt? How do their children navigate a bilingual, bicultural existence? How do their grandchildren display their American-ness with a tense mixture of social savvy and longing for the past? All of these realities exist in the same space and time. I am a third or fourth generation Mexican American (depending on which ancestor you choose) and when I was a kid, my father took me out to the fields to help him pick cotton. So this man I am photographing amidst the tobacco is not me, nor is he my father or my grandfather, but he could have been. He and I are not so far removed from each other. We are essentially made of the same material and woven into the same cloth. Thus, the responsibility not to say anything false about the lives of everyone I photograph reverberates within me. Instead, my work almost defiantly shows regular, mundane life. I like how people naturally arrange themselves against their environment. I am attentive to posture, dress, interaction, and the lines on faces that speak of difficulties and joy. Ultimately when I place my work before the viewer, I am not in control of his or her reaction, nor do I seek to be. At best, I hope only to create more conversations: conversations between Latino parents and children about the past and future; conversations between neighbors of disparate backgrounds filled with a shared hope; conversations that transcend the shallow political rhetoric that passes for domestic policy debate; conversations that inspire young people to empower themselves. I hope too that the viewer as well as the viewed can sense the respect and love that underscores my commitment to this documentary work. I hope I have done justice to who we as Latinos really are, have been, and are becoming. - Jose Galvez