White Fence, Los Cholos

Graciela Iturbide's White Fence, Los Cholos series originates from a single day of work: May 2, 1986, when the photographer participated in A Day in the Life of America, an editorial project that sent photographers across the country to document everyday life within a 24-hour span. Iturbide's assignment brought her to a Boyle Heights apartment, where she was welcomed by a group of Mexican American women, most of them deaf, with ties to the White Fence gang. What might have been a single editorial frame became instead a sustained engagement, as Iturbide moved beyond the constraints of the assignment to build a body of images centered on trust, kinship, and the particular visual language of the group she encountered.

The resulting photographs reflect Iturbide's enduring approach to portraiture: an intimacy built through duration and respect rather than distance or spectacle. Rather than documenting the White Fence community as subjects observed from outside, Iturbide's images register as collaborations, marked by direct gazes, unguarded gestures, and a shared understanding between photographer and sitter. The series stands as a counterpart to her better-known Mexican work, extending her long-standing interest in community, ritual, and identity to a Los Angeles context, while affirming photography's capacity to render presence and belonging within a single, sustained encounter.