Fotonovela with Harry Gamboa Jr.
Tuesday, July 30, 2024, 4:30 PM
In front of the Hollywood United Methodist Church
6817 Franklin Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90028
Join us for a public photoshoot for Harry Gamboa Jr.’s most recent fotonovela project and witness the artist’s creative process in action.
Artist Harry Gamboa Jr. is working with his troupe to create a series of site-specific photographs for a fotonovela (photo story) inspired by the neighborhood of Hollywood, to be presented at LACE in 2026. This photoshoot will be documented on video for future use.
About the Artist
Harry Gamboa Jr. (b. 1951), one of LACE’s founding members, has an established career as an artist, writer, and educator. He is the founder and director of the international performance troupe, Virtual Vérité (2005–2017) and a co-founder of the performance group Asco (1972–1985). A longtime faculty member at the prestigious California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Gamboa has mentored dozens of artists that have been students and collaborators. His art practice is interwoven with his activism, which started back in 1970 when he marched through East Los Angeles alongside over 20,000 people protesting the Vietnam War in the National Chicano Moratorium, igniting his social conscience as a young Chicano.
His commitment to Los Angeles urban and cultural life has manifested through his work and his collaborative photographic practice of the last three decades, in which he engages current and former students, artists, and members of the community to participate in his fotonovela projects. These are inspired by comics and the rich tradition of the fotonovela, which are popular photo and text adaptations of stories published in magazines and periodicals in Latin America, gaining popularity in the United States as an informational tool within Latinx and Chicanx communities.
See the 2016 LA Times article by Carolina Miranda: We watch artist Harry Gamboa Jr. stage a fotonovela at the site of L.A.’s demolished 6th Street Bridge
Support
Support for this commission is provided by the California Arts Council.
