# @gettymuseum on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DPw3FALE2UB
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/35720232-gettymuseum-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/302b3c712a.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-10-13T20:50:26.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Getty (@gettymuseum) — https://gondola.cc/gettymuseum

## Caption

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by diving into the photographs of Ricardo Valverde. 📷

Valverde was part of the first wave of Chicanos to be professionally trained in Southern California art schools. He made photographs at a time when artists of color didn't get much exposure or institutional support.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona he moved with his family to Los Angeles in the late 1950s. Following brief periods at various local colleges, he enrolled in the Air Force during the Vietnam War and after completing his military service he earned an undergraduate degree in art history from the University of California Los Angeles. In 1976 he earned an MFA degree from UCLA, where he studied with the conceptual artist Robert Heinecken. 

Valverde admired the work of modern photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, Edward Weston, and Manuel Álvarez Bravo and realized that he, too, was interested in documentary photography. He gained recognition, particularly within the LA Chicano art world, for the images he made in local neighborhoods while employed as a meter reader by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Valverde visited Mexico often and felt a strong connection with its art and traditions. Although he printed many of his portraits and street photographs in black and white in the late 1970s and 1980s, he returned to select images in the '90s, reprinting them, sometimes adding hand-coloring and collage, other times scratching and marking the physical prints. The evolution of his photographs over the years demonstrates that his work was in a continual state of flux and receptive to ongoing reinterpretations.

#HispanicHeritageMonth #MesDeLaHerenciaHispana

📸:
1. Untitled, 1976, Ricardo Valverde. Getty Museum. Gift of Esperanza Valverde and Christopher J. Valverde Collection. © Esperanza Valverde 
2. Shop Keeper in Los Angeles, negative 1979; print 1991, Ricardo Valverde. Getty Museum. © Esperanza Valverde
3. Whittier Blvd, 1979, Ricardo Valverde. Getty Museum. © Esperanza Valverde
4. Loteria de Muertos, negative 1983; print 1993, Ricardo Valverde. Getty Museum. © Esperanza Valverde
5. Downtown L.A (Woman in Los Angeles), 1976, Ricardo Valverde. Getty

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## Tags

mesdelaherenciahispana, hispanicheritagemonth

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