Chicana Fotos on Display at the Reuther Library

Born and raised in Chicago by Mexican-­American parents, Nancy De Los Santos is an accomplished filmmaker and proud “Chicana from Chicago” who has dedicated her life and career to rewriting and redefining the image of Latina/os in the mainstream media. Among her most celebrated works are as Co‐Writer and Co-­Producer of “The Bronze Screen: 100 Years of the Latin Image in Hollywood Cinema,” with Susan Racho and Alberto Dominguez, and as Associate Producer on the feature film “Selena.”

In Chicana Fotos, an exhibit of evocative photographs taken in the 1970s, we meet a very different Nancy: a woman armed with a camera, capturing historic events in the struggles for social justice of the time. Nancy’s photographs of Chicano Movement marches and rallies, farmworker mobilizations in Chicago and Texas, and Latina organizing in the Midwest and internationally offer a priceless documentary view of Latina/o politics the 1970s. Her more intimate pictures of everyday Latina/o life capture what it was like to live through a period of radical social transformation. The exhibit includes rare photographs of UFW organizing activities in Chicago, the Texas Farmworker Pilgrimage of 1977, and the first ever International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City in 1975. These images are supplemented by never before exhibited documents from the Walter P. Reuther United Farm Workers Collection.

The exhibit is open to the public Monday-Friday, 10-4, until April 14, 2017.

Chicana Fotos was curated by University of Michigan professor Maria Cotera (with assistance from Pau Nava) and designed in collaboration with UM Professors Hannah Smotrich, Katie Rubin and the students in their Museum exhibition design course at the University of Michigan's Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design.

Chicana Fotos was conceived and designed in collaboration with El Museo del Norte, the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Archive, the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design, the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies at Wayne State University.

Chicana Fotos was made possible through the generous financial support of the University of Michigan’s Third Century Initiative and the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design.