Week 7 Artist Star Montana

I appreciate photography and how it has become an art form for many people to express their emotions and vulnerability. Photography captures reality and one’s experience. It's beautiful how photos can be part of our history and preserve our culture in a white hegemonic society.  This is why I picked a Chicana photographer who I can emotionally connect with their work. The artist that I will be presenting is on Star Montana’s photography. She was born and raised in Boyle Heights, a Latinx community. I love that I can resonate with her work because I grew up in Huntington Park and Boyle Heights. Her work is looking at Latinx communities and Chicanx bodies in a still photo. Her photos evoke familialism and they can open the discourse of intersectionality in her community. There's an intimacy that the photos can portray in how the spectators can view the true reality of Latinx people in Los Angeles. Montana’s photographs are mostly portraits and Los Angeles Latinx communities that have been forgotten. What she does is historicizes Latinx presence and space in her photos, so our presence will not be erased.
She began photography by taking classes at East Los Angeles Community college with one of her friends. That's when she fell in love and went out to buy 35mm cameras. She tested them at her home and people she knew and are important to her Chicanx experience in LA. She mostly shoots and works with her family. When she shoots her family and records her emotional journey w is part of her family history. It is beautiful the vulnerability she takes upon taking these phots and shows it to a large audience.
The photo below is called La Chuca. It is a photo showing a subculture in the Chicano community. The model is showing her true authenticity of a Chola/Pachuca individual claiming a space.