Graciela Iturbide
White Fence
Published by RM editorial, 2024
Book size 32 x 24.5 cm
146 pages
Hardcover
Languages: English
On May 2, 1986, images were taken that gave rise to the book A Day in the Life of America. Graciela Iturbide was part of the team of photographers who, over the course of twenty-four hours, recorded daily life in different locations across the United States. Her contribution to the time capsule was a portrait taken in an apartment in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles, California. There, she was greeted by a group of Mexican Americans, mostly deaf women with ties to the White Fence gang.
This initial meeting paved the way for a lifelong friendship as well as the composition of a photographic narrative that could very well be described as the intermittent chronicle of one day extended over thirty-three years, from 1986 to 2019.
Under the gaze of renowned Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, this project vividly depicts the lives of several residents of the Chicano community of Boyle Heights, located in East Los Angeles. The title refers to the historic street gang known as the White Fence, which has held territory in Boyle Heights since 1900. They were one of the most violent gangs in the 20th-century East End and among the first to use weapons.
Beginning with photographs Graciela Iturbide took in 1986 for A Day in the Life of America magazine and culminating in a reunion in 2019, this publication is divided into two volumes, housed in a slipcase. The first book presents the series of images captured in 1986, 1989, 2018, and 2019. The second volume includes the essay “White Fence Revisited” by Alfonso Morales Carrillo, describing both the development of this photographic series and the historical context it ultimately conveys: the formation and persistence of communities of Mexican descent north of the Rio Grande. White Fence is an emotional visual journey through decades of history: an intimate exploration of identity that connects the past and present of this fascinating Los Angeles community.