#roberto tejada

We’d often been included in   the weather, whose changes (as in the   still, portending darknesses of after   noon) were hardly evident, if even   manifest at all. The August rain   over Mixcoac & the deadening   of all aspect at a distance:   yet our sudden wet bodies, firm   swelling divested finally of shirts   & trousers, left beside turbid   footprints on the tiled floor;   this tongue, these lips the lightning   over the unchartered landscape of your   thigh: successive terra nova to   resist the still life of the body

Still Life We’d often been included in   the weather, whose changes (as in the   still, portending darknesses of after   noon) were hardly evident, if even   manifest at all. The August rain   over Mixcoac & the deadening   of all aspect at a distance:   yet our sudden wet bodies, firm   swelling divested finally of shirts   & trousers, left beside turbid   footprints on the tiled floor;   this tongue, these lips the lightning   over the unchartered landscape of your   thigh: successive terra nova to   resist the still life of the body

— Roberto Tejada

relinquished by statis,  

object always of my

natal, crepuscular desire,  

into the translucent specter,

body’s blue fossil  

of ice, never autochthonous,

still embarked upon  

the imperative passage to get

there, to secure a geography  

that will beg description,

narrative map, adopted  

tentatively; if only to write

the ritual book of what was possible,  

The Oscar Castillo Papers and Photograph Collection

The Chicano Archives, volume 5

edited by Colin Gunckel

2011

8.5 x 11

122 pages

16 color plates, 52 black-and-white illustrations

Paperback

ISBN: 978-0-89551-140-9

Since the late 1960s, photographer Oscar Castillo has documented the Chicano community in Los Angeles and South Texas. His subjects range from political events to cultural practices to the work of muralists and painters. His photographs explore major themes (social movement, cultural heritage, urban environment, barrio life) and approaches (photojournalism, portraiture, art photography). The Oscar Castillo Photograph Collection at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center contains more than 3,000 digital images that are available through an online archive.

With essays by

Rudy Acuña

Leonardo Castellanos

Ernesto Chávez

Harry Gamboa Jr.

Colin Gunckel

Elize Mazadiego

Roberto Tejada