Capturing Los Invisibles & Bringing Them Out of the Shadows: Curator’s Notes

Generally, the photographers in our communities are the ones that see what most of us miss, and the good ones capture the unseen with acute vision and sublime compositions, transforming our normality into an artful reality. At the beginning of this project when we put out the initial call to photographers in late June, Andy Antippas and I were struck by how few submissions were in as the July 30th deadline approached. We extended our call to early August and continued our outreach to photographers local and national.

In numerous conversations with well-known photographer friends about this project, most confessed that it had not dawn upon them to document the thousands of Latino immigrants that were all around us rebuilding house after devastated house since the storm. A few did express intentions to photograph this historical convergence of Spanish speaking laborers here, but somehow never did. The lack of entries became a testament to the conclusions I have formed for the past five years; that the Latino immigrant laborers rebuilding New Orleans have been ubiquitous and invisible at the same time. If the photographers, who are the ones with cameras as their natural appendages to frame the less noticeable, had not managed to focus their trained eyes on the immigrant workers, how was the common man and woman expected to render them visible? They truly had become the invisible, and we were wondering if there would be a photo exhibition at all.

In Spanish, los invisibles is the term often used for those who have disappeared or are missing because of political intolerance under the many past dictatorships in our Latin American countries. It is a complicated term, but it aptly applies to the conditions of undocumented Latino immigrants in a United States gripped by hysterical fears that the alien other is taking over. While they have not been disappeared, they are without a doubt a shadow people. Their vulnerable status has transformed them into a transparent people that are not recognized as fully human. It makes their suffering an obscure painful story easy to ignore because foreigners are classified as “aliens” in the country, extraterrestrials from the Planet Other with a marginalized existence.

We are grateful for the photographers in this exhibition whose third eye did see los invisibles and have submitted documentary photos, immigrant portraits, and images of day laborers at various pick-up points across the city. Aoife Naughton and Wes Wallace, now living in Dublin, Ireland, submitted their work across international waters. Their 2006-07 series documents immigrants at two major pick-up points, Lee Circle and the Claiborne Avenue and MLK Blvd. intersection. The photo titled “Lee Circle I” is probably the most haunting depiction of huddled laborers waiting to be chosen. The gray-greenish black and white tint of the image transforms it into a science fiction still that evokes an apocalyptic holding station for day laborers.

“Claiborne Avenue III” is a portrait of a defiant worker for hire who could easily pass for a Pancho Villa look alike, if Pancho had risen from the dead to put up Sheetrock. With folded arms, he is distinguished by a striking mustache and a disheveled Everyman’s attire of someone familiar with hard work. In “Claiborne Avenue V”, two workers are standing against a large painted wall of the Big Easy Deli. The two figures are ironically cornered before the painted wall ad that declares, “Open 24 Hours”, as if to suggest that immigrants are for hire for all hours of the day. It is one of the most striking images in the show. Collectively, the ten photos Naughton and Wallace have contributed reprise a comprehensive study of immigrants at these two major labor pick-up points. They have captured poignant portraits that magnify the workers' humanity, vulnerability, and manly cojones needed to stand on a street corner in search of work. This act itself is one that we should honor because only the brave and needy engage in such a dangerous activity.

Abdul Aziz focuses his photojournalistic lens on a recent 2010 May Day demonstration. His “Strongest Little Voice” depicts a proud fist-to-the air immigrant girl leading a congregation of marchers that carry a horizontal banner in protest of Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 legislation. Almost mythically, she appears to be a modern-day Mestiza brown Joan of Arc, leading her people to battle with her own banner whose only visible words STOP are enough to imply a halt to the criminalization of immigrants.

In “The Carousel for Democracy”, Craig Morse catches two Honduran young men in a moment of relaxation, perhaps in between jobs, atop plastic carousel horses. The image echoes a Diane Arbus surreality that is both comical and oddly disturbing. Wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, the young man in the foreground is straddling the petite plastic horse in an almost awkward man-child pose with a cheesy replica of the Statue of Liberty in the background. This juxtaposition gives the photo a political resonance that maybe the promise of prosperity in the land of opportunity is not as real as imagined.

Meryt Harding’s “Believe” is a half body portrait of a worker with an Obama campaign Tee-shirt, where the candidate in a messianic posture seems to be recruiting more believers like an Uncle Sam with a sun tan. What is often loss in the Obama rise to the White House story is that Barak exemplifies the greatest dream an immigrant here can have: That their U.S. born offspring can ascend to such a powerful position. Obama is the Hawaiian-born son of an African immigrant, and there is a tenderness and hopefulness in the face of this Latino man sporting this shirt. Maybe Obama can deliver the positive immigration reform that many Latinos who voted for him are waiting for.

Mario Tama’s “Migrant Day Laborers Help New Orleans Rebuild Series #1” manages to frame a lesser know aspect of the immigrant plight, as many trek thousands of miles from their countries of origin and leave families behind to work on this side of the border. His image focuses on a worn color photograph of a five-month old baby boy being shown to the viewer by a young father whose sculptural caramel-colored face recedes in the background. It is a photo within a photo, and we learn that it is the son the immigrant laborer has not seen because he made the journey to New Orleans before his baby’s birth. There are hundreds of stories like this among the many immigrants who have labored hard to rebuild the Big Easy over the past five years. It is my hope that this exhibition can humanize a people that have been rendered invisible.
--- José Torres-Tama