Announcer: This is a Getty Podcast
Jaime Roque: Hey, I'm Jaime, host of ReCurrent,
a Getty podcast.
On ReCurrent I explore the hidden cultural stories
all around us, the stories that live in photographs,
archives, and everyday places.
Season two is out now with all six episodes available,
and I wanted to share an episode with you here today.
On this episode, Backlot and Barrio, I spent time with
photographer George Rodriguez, whose camera captured two
sides of Los Angeles—Hollywood backlots and Los Angeles’
East Side—documenting celebrity culture while staying rooted
in community and resistance.
If you'd like to hear the rest of the season and explore more
stories like this, you can find ReCurrent wherever you listen to
podcasts or at getty dot edu slash podcasts slash recurrent.
[Voices yelling over sirens, photos snapping.
Voice over radio says “All units respond”]
[Brass music begins]
George Rodriguez: You could be somewhere like in East LA
at a school walkout and then you come back and in a half
an hour, now you’re working on Hollywood magazines.
They’re not aware of the other situation, they’re
totally different worlds.
Roque: That’s photographer George Rodriguez, the most
influential Southern California photographer you likely
haven’t heard of until now.
He is talking about his experience of shooting Hollywood
on one role of film and the Latino experience on the next.
Hello, my name is Jaime and welcome to ReCurrent.
If you haven’t heard of George Rodriguez, that’s okay.
Before this story, I hadn’t either.
Now, I want you to imagine this—I’m at lunch with Idurre
Alonso, the head of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Getty.
We’re talking about possible topics for
ReCurrent’s new season.
And in between bites she asks, “You know George Rodriguez?” My
first thought was, “Yeah, I know a couple George Rodriguez’, but
probably not the one you are talking about.” So, I say: “No.”
And then boom—crash course: the East LA walkouts, the Chicano
Moratorium, farmworkers marching with César Chávez and the UFW…
then a hard cut to Hollywood—red carpets, studio lots, and
faces you might know and recognize like Michael Jackson,
N.W.A., Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, even Marilyn Monroe.
And I was hooked and I needed to know
more.
[Percussion music begins]
Rodriguez: My name is George Rodríguez and I was born here in
LA, actually in South Central.
Roque: George is born in 1937 and not long after
that, his dad opens a shoe repair shop on Skid Row.
The shop is downstairs and the family in the back.
By the late ’40s, around twelve, George is back
in South Central LA.
While attending Fremont High, George is in
need of an elective.
A friend suggests a photography course because
he heard it was easy.
And it turns out, George loves it and begins putting
in hours of practice, getting as much experience as he can.
Then, one small favor for a friend changes everything.
Rodriguez: What happened exactly was a friend of
mine that I was in school with, he needed a ride to
Hollywood so I gave him a ride.
I had luckily parked in front of a photo studio and
I saw this guy setting up to take some photographs.
I went in and talked to him and that man was Sid Avery.
Roque: Sid Avery was one of Hollywood’s go-to photographers
in the 1950s and ’60s—famous for candid, off-set portraits
and photo essays that ran in magazines that were on
nearly everyone’s coffee table across the country.
Magazines like LIFE, Look, Collier’s, and The
Saturday Evening Post.
His subjects spanned Audrey Hepburn, James
Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, and more.
Rodriguez: Coincidentally he was starting a photo lab
so, I went and applied to work and I got a job there
working in the Hollywood area.
Roque: Famous Hollywood names start to stack up
as the work increases.
Rodriguez: I guess he liked me so he would have me assist
him on shoots he would do.
And he, like I say, we went to Lucille Ball’s house
and I was only about 18 years old and I loved it.
But then after a while you know you take it for granted, having
conversations with Michael Jackson and Jim Morrison.
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, you know, you don't think
about it, until later do you realize how special that is.
Roque: The origin story’s set—a kid from South
Central, trained at Fremont, hustling in labs and on sets.
But things are about to change for him.
He doesn’t know it yet but the frame is starting to shift.
Rodriguez: I remember when I worked at Chris Lawford
publishing company, if I knew things were going on I would
leave at lunchtime and go to East LA and shoot the stuff.
[Trumpet music begins]
Roque: March of 1968.
George is now working at the photo lab at Columbia pictures,
which publishes celebrity pics like Frank Sinatra
and Warren Beatty and movie premiers like Bye Bye Birdie
and Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
But across town, students from Wilson, Garfield,
Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Belmont High Schools walk out.
[Fast-paced guitar music]
They are protesting overcrowded schools, scarce
resources, and bias against Mexican American students.
It became a defining action of the Chicano Movement—which
was a civil-rights wave led by Mexican Americans to
win better schools, labor rights, representation, and
control over their own story.
Rodriguez: You could be somewhere like in East LA
at a school walkout and it’s immersed in 100 percent Chicano
Mexican environment and then you come back and in a half
an hour, now you’re working on Hollywood magazines and
they’re not aware of the other situation and they really don’t
care and they don’t get it.
[Trumpet music]
Roque: Speaking to George, something clicks for me:
culture is made and kept by the people who show up.
George did—and saved what might’ve been forgotten.
He was there, documenting the movement, yes, and also
participating by documenting it.
Researching this episode, I poured through the 2018
monograph “Double Vision”, which catalogued George’s career.
I was surprised to find picture after picture that
I recognized—from my old Chicano Studies textbooks.
Photographs of a requiem procession for Robert F.
Kennedy the day after he died that ran down Brooklyn
Ave. to East LA College.
Robert Kennedy was a big supporter of César Chávez and
the United Farm Workers, or UFW, so his death was a big
deal for Mexican Americans.
I find photographs of the Chicano Moratorium—the
anti–Vietnam War protests led by Mexican Americans.
And photographs of the United Farm Workers organization, in
Delano, in the Central Valley: the boycotts, hunger strikes,
and the UFW’s continuous organizing alongside César
Chávez and Dolores Huerta.
Huerta would go on to say George’s photos helped bring
people to the cause, and that he understood it because he
was part of the community.
Rodriguez: Yeah, I realize now that you know that what I lived
through is actually history.
Roque: He took as many shots as he could out of fear
that nobody else would.
And he did so with the same care, attention,
and artistry he used when taking celebrity portraits.
The originals?
Many are now at the Getty Research Institute.
[Elevator moves and opens.
Jaime greets someone]
I’m at the Getty Research Institute with
curator Idurre Alonso.
We’re going through George Rodríguez’s photos.
We face 30 boxes full of decades worth of George’s contact
sheets, negatives, and images.
[In background] And then we can go over all this afterwards…
You can see the craft in each of his photos.
And that’s part of why these pictures live here—not
just for what they show, but how they show it.
Years on sets taught George to read light fast, to compose in
chaos, to wait for the breath between action and after.
The same eye that could flatter a movie star found
the glow on a hand‑painted sign in a protest and the
anger on a marcher’s face.
He brought studio craft to the sidewalk—and it shows.
The frames are beautiful, human, precise.
Idurre Alonso: For me, it was like, everything as a whole.
I think he just wanted to document what was
happening for him.
Or maybe thinking on the future, but at the time
it was just for him.
Roque: In one photo, white helmeted police stand over
a teen protestor beaten with batons in East LA.
Another shows a sign that says, “Roosevelt Chicanos
Demand Justice.” And in another, a march led by
Chicano activists Brown Berets.
Alonso: Also the depiction of East LA and Pico Rivera is, this
is the 60s, this is the 70s.
And, and even also these depictions of kids and
the people in East LA.
In the case of George Rodriguez, he’s Mexican American and he’s
actually the first Chicano artist to enter the collection.
Roque: Wow.
That’s powerful.
Alonso: Very powerful, yeah.
Roque: Hearing “first” lands hard.
Really?
the first one?
And also: finally.
It’s powerful to stand with Getty’s first Chicano archive.
In big institutions, it can be hard to find your
own heritage reflected.
I work here, and even for me it’s not always obvious
where my culture fits.
But I find resonance in these boxes.
I ask Idurre why George’s archive is here.
Alonso: You would encounter in this archive something that is
not usually found in archives.
So usually when you see photographs of LA in this
time period, what you see is the west side.
You don’t see the east.
Two different universes.
Roque: In the archival boxes, it isn’t just celebrities
and protests—there are records of daily life.
Kids after school, storefronts on a Sunday,
neighbors on the block.
As George puts it, you’re photographing the politics,
sure, but behind the politics, people live full lives.
Rodriguez: The people, you know, they don’t realize
that their heroes are just trying to make a living.
That’s just like me, you know, I was taking pictures, some of
this stuff was very powerful, and that’s what I… I knew that
I had to do it because I thought nobody else was doing it.
Roque: Culture—images, stories, memory—is safeguarded
by people long before an institution gets involved.
George’s approach to documenting and capturing
his culture and community is vital and alive today.
[car driving]
I drive to Santa Ana to meet photographer and
educator William Camargo and see the legacy of
George Rodriguez in action.
Hey!
William Camargo: Hey!
How you doing?
[chatter fades]
My name is William Camargo.
I was born in Santana, but was raised in Anaheim.
My first introduction to photography was in high school.
I was just actually trying to get an easy A, and it just
turned out that I enjoyed photography quite a bit.
Roque: [Over chatter] Already, I hear echoes of Geroge’s
story—chancing into a career in pursuit of an easy A. And
there are more similarities: celebrities by day and
social movements by night.
Camargo: I was doing a lot of music photography too
and once in a while I was stringing for a photo agency.
Like these red carpets where I would always get
these assignments that are like the premier of this
movie in the Beverly Hotel and then the afternoon was
like a protest in downtown.
Roque: But William sees George’s impact in another project.
Camargo: The book I’m finishing right now is probably
one of the big influences from George too, right?
It’s called Origins in Displacement.
Roque: It’s a portrait of Anaheim you don’t
see on postcards.
Camargo: A lot of history was hidden or was not told.
I never really learned about it until I was reading
all these alternative newspapers where I first
encountered these archives.
I am just documenting my own community, right, walking
around, photographing friends, photographing
family, photographing folks I was just meeting as well.
You know, people were hitting me up from Instagram being like,
“Hey, come to my neighborhood. Like, I'll show you
around.”
[Violin music]
Roque: And the work continues—William in Anaheim
doing work inspired by George.
And there are now countless other Chicano
photographers holding up their corners of the city.
Photographers like Chito, Banda, Frankie Orozco, Suitcase
Joe, and Estevan Oriol.
We’re in safe hands.
Our culture, our community, is being recorded by this new
generation of photographers.
In the next few months, George is preparing to move out of
his downtown studio space, where he’s been for 25 years.
This is one reason why his archive is
moving to the GRI now.
But even as George prepares to hang up his camera,
his work isn’t vanishing.
It’s multiplying.
And this is what makes him one of the most influential Southern
California photographers, even if this is the first
you’re hearing of his story.
[Alonso in the background] I set up things so that we can…
[over background chatter] Back at Getty, Idurre and
I return to the boxes of George’s photographs—thinking
about how images move through hands, families, and time.
They’re being catalogued not so that they can be sealed off, but
so that they can be findable.
And if we do this right, they’re returnable—pop-ups
in schools and rec centers, library showings, neighborhood
talks, and digitized sets people can search—ways to
access their own history, their photos, their culture,
their part of LA’s story.
Preservation is step one.
Circulation is step two.
Inspiring the next generation is three.
Alonso: The photography department is putting
together a show on Chicano photographers and George
is gonna be part of it.
So, in my opinion, I would like to see these photos going back
to East LA, or South LA in many cases, because there’s a lot of
photographs of the kids in South LA at different high schools.
And how can you work with the kids today and show them these
photographs and what happened and make them think about the
history of what is happening now or the usage of images
today because I think they’re very powerful and even though
they’re like 60 years old, they’re still very relevant
today because many of these issues were never resolved.
[Quick guitar music]
Roque: Knowing that
Getty is preserving George Rodríguez’s archive—Getty’s
first Chicano archive—means images of people who
look like my family now live in Getty’s archives.
And George’s photographs belong here not only because
of what they catalogue but because of how they’re
built—light, line, timing—and made from inside the community.
He didn’t parachute in; he belonged.
He knew how to read the noon sun, how to snap a
crowded scene so that it reads clear and human, and
how to wait for the breath between chant and silence.
And he knew how to see people—leaders, workers, kids
after school—as neighbors first.
That’s the human care you feel in each frame.
Writing this episode, I kept turning to the
sun-faded photo of my dad that I keep on my desk.
He’s on a break while working the fields of the
Central Valley—no credit line, no caption, just him
drinking water, looking straight into the camera.
That picture is a treasure in my family.
It reminds us of the sacrifices made for a better life.
But artistically, I can admit it leaves something to be desired.
That’s one reason I’ve been so drawn to George’s story: because
of how he brought studio chops to the street—and the farm.
That craft is the difference between a
snapshot and a photograph that enters the record.
But history isn’t an either/or.
These images have different homes and are equally necessary.
My dad’s picture is our private record—family
memory, inherited meaning.
George’s pictures are a record the public can see—in
Los Angeles and beyond—so other Chicanos can search,
learn, and recognize themselves and their heritage.
One keeps a family; the other helps keep a people visible.
When I ask George about his legacy, he admits
it’s hard to grasp.
He says it’s only later that you realize you
did something special.
Rodriguez: You know, if I can do it because my beginnings
are very, very minimal.
I mean, like I say, we lived on Skid Row and I was
raised in South Central.
If I can do it, anyone can do it.
Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it.
Because they did tell me I couldn’t do it.
You don't want to listen to those people because they don’t
know you—you might be special.
[Music fades out]
Roque: Recurrent is written and produced by
me, Jaime, with creative support from Zoe Goldman.
Our executive producer is Christopher Sprinkle.
To see the photos, head to getty dot edu slash
podcast slash recurrent for some of my favorites.
The museum has 41 of George Rodriguez’s images
digitized and viewable.
There’s a link in the show notes, and for transcripts,
images, and additional resources, visit getty dot edu
slash podcast slash recurrent.