Art
An American
Leader -- Cesar E. Chavez
By TED PARKS
A viewer looks at a Victor Alemán photograph of
Cesar E. Chavez
photos by -- Ted Parks
An organizers job is to help ordinary people do
extraordinary things.
Quoting her grandfather Cesar Chavez, Cristina Chavez Delgado was
addressing an audience at the Los Angeles Latino Museum of History, Art and
Culture in late March during a reception for An American Leader -- Cesar
E. Chavez. The exhibit of photographs, memorabilia and paintings
documents Chavezs United Farm Workers movement.
The show befits Chavezs own extraordinary struggle,
according to curator Kent Kirkton, professor of journalism and director of the
Center for Photojournalism and Visual History at California State University
Northridge.
This
is the first time that a major museum has
mounted a major exhibition focusing on Chavez and the farm workers,
Kirkton said. The show brings together the work of six exceptional
photographers who were dedicated to the cause and to telling the story of
rights denied and the struggle to regain them, he added.
Spanning 1966 to 1993, the pictures convey familiar images from
the farm workers campaign. Among the pictures are meetings at union
headquarters in Delano, Calif.; Chavez in front of a Safeway supermarket;
marchers making the trek from Delano to Sacramento; and union pickets
silhouetted against the California dawn.
Several photographs reveal a tight connection between the church
and the fight for justice.
Photographer Victor Alemán with one of his
photographs
In Víctor Alemáns Supporters blessing
Cesar during his fast, La Paz, a color image from 1988, three women pray
for Chavez. In this study of contrasting expressions, the woman behind the
leader and to the right cries out imploringly. The middle woman, her right hand
on Chavezs shoulder, closes her eyes and parts her lips. On the left, the
third petitioner bows slightly, eyes open.
The trios response was spontaneous, Alemán explained,
the women approaching Chavez after Mass on the second day of a protest fast.
He just closed his eyes and got involved in the spirituality of it,
said Alemán.
Editor of the United Farm Workers newspaper El
Malcriado in the early 1960s, Alemán went on to manage Radio
Campesina, which he identified as the first radio station specifically for farm
workers. For the last nine years, Alemán has edited Vida Nueva, a
Spanish-language weekly published by the Los Angeles archdiocese.
Another of Alemáns images also suggests Chavezs
devotion, though more subtly. Undated, the large black and white image has
Chavez seated, a jacket draped over his shoulder, his upper body leaning
forward, his profiled head bowed.
The drama comes from a child looking hauntingly at the camera from
middle of the photograph. Her slight body leans into Chavezs from the
opposite direction, her head resting on his leg, her mouth obscured behind
Chavezs gently curved hand that returns her embrace. The little
girls frightened eyes contrast with Chavezs sloping form, his
concentration intense but not too strong to sense the childs emotion.
Alemán identified the little girl as one of Chavezs
grandchildren, and said he took the photograph during Mass.
There was always a Mass before we marched,
Alemán said. He added, Chavez was a very religious man.
Some of the most striking photographs in the show are by John
Kouns, who showed up at the United Farm Workers headquarters in January
1966 to do some picket duty and some photography, according to the
exhibition guide. Kouns studied at the New York Institute of Photography, where
he met famous photojournalist Eugene Smith.
In one of Kouns black and white images, a nun carries a
United Farm Workers flag, the banners horizontal lines intersecting her
perpendicular black habit textured by the California sun. In the image beside
it, Kouns uses a sharply vertical camera angle to look straight down on a group
from the Delano to Sacramento march of 1966.
Echoing the daring perspectives associated with Soviet
photographer Alexander Rodchenko, the steep angle imbues the group of marchers
with determination and also creates a visual pun. The marchers bear flags --
first the flag of the United States, then what appears to be the flag of
Mexico, then what seem to be United Farm Worker banners.
The angle puts two marchers astride the word Right painted
into the streets traffic directions. Could we take this as a visual
affirmation of the rightness of La Causa - or the union
symbolically vanquishing any opposition from right-wingers?
Besides Alvarez and Kouns, the show includes photographs by Oscar
Castillo, Emmon Maikaaloa Clarke, George Rodriguez and Jocelyn Sherman.
Like Alemán, Clarke worked for the United Farm Workers El
Malcriado, which he served as photographer in 1967. Sherman started working
for the union in 1989 and is currently its public affairs manager.
While the bulk of the exhibition is photography, the show includes
other media. Especially noteworthy is a large canvas by Carlos Almaraz,
Cesar Chavez talking with farm workers, dated 1972 and echoing the
social themes and style of the Mexican muralists.
The value of the Chavez exhibit goes beyond its important
documentation of the farm workers movement. As curator Kirkton put it, the six
photographers offer a sense of a struggle and a man who was committed to
helping people find their place in this world, to ending a particular
injustice, and to doing that peacefully.
An American Leader--Cesar Chavez continues through
Aug. 18 in Los Angeles before traveling to the Chicano Museum in Phoenix, Ariz.
Ted Parks writes from Malibu, Calif. He may be reached at
tparks5560@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, May 19,
2000
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