Photographs by louis carlos bernal

PDF: Wingate, Louis Carlos Bernal’s Photographs

While researching photographs of domestic interiors in the papers of Louis Carlos Bernal (–), I saw several images that invited me to think about the meaning of television for his practice, including shots of televised broadcasts of John F.

Kennedy and photos of Mexican American subjects in their homes beside their TV sets. One such image formally connects a woman named Anita Ortiz with a commemorative John F. Kennedy tapestry hanging on the wall of her living room (fig.

1). The tapestry, a tribute to the thirty-fifth president as well as a marker of North American belonging, hangs above two stacked TVs. The sets, with their blank but gleaming screens, were the means by which JFK’s image entered US homes in the s.

Much of Bernal’s work from the s and s features intimate portraits of southwestern neighborhoods at a time when TV coverage of Mexican American life