Pablo Alonso Cruz
Pablo Alonso Cruz reflects on his hyphenated identity as a Mexican-American and the in-between space that bridges both cultures, particularly through the history of photography that has shaped the Chicano experience.
As a tool of documentation and portrayal during the Mexican Revolution, photography contributed to a sense of national identity in an emerging republic that still resonates today. Cruz’s photography practice—across photojournalism, studio lighting, and alternative processes—is informed by this history of mechanical reproduction and its importance to Mexican and Chicano cultures to reconcile the gap between cultural and racial identity and reflect the tapestry of the Mexican-American experience.
Throughout my practice, I set out to document the diverse cultural elements that shape the Mexican-American experience through a specific form of classification. The method I employed for this cultural typology is cyanotype, a photographic process developed by Sir John Herschel in the mid-19th century.
While initially used primarily to record and classify botanical specimens; I adapted this early photographic process to capture and categorize cultural expressions, not as an outsider but as someone who bridges both cultures' identities. A collage of individual images was made in response to Casta Paintings, all of which were made to catalog the mestizaje that was taking place in colonial Mexico. Casta is a system that favored those who looked more European, adopted customs of this colonizing force, and assimilated, a practice that persists among many in the Mexican-American community.
For many who crossed la Frontera and settled in the U.S., this assimilation has become essential to achieving the myth of the American Dream. By synthesizing a body of work that identifies the cultural complexity within the Chicano and Mexican-American community, I aim to catalog the diverse aspects of the Mexican- American experience in a non-hierarchical manner, as many of these elements represent the totality of this cultural identity.
