Background
Oscar Castillo – Artist Narrative: As a youth my parents influenced me in that my mother kept a family photo album, which
I keep now, in which our family photos and memories were kept. These were not just snapshots, but now I can see that they
are well composed as well as tell a story by the choice of locations as well as depicting different people. My photography
carries on my early memories of community, family and a sense of place, although I have chosen to look at a much larger extended
family and community. Since I'm of Hispanic and Native American heritage, my work is very influenced and reflects these backgrounds
while at the same time make a universal statement. As a multi discipline artist I work in different media such as drawing,
painting, stained glass, ceramics, and mixed media, but with a main emphasis on photography as art. While in Japan, during
the mid 1960's, I was very influenced by the cultural and environmental beauty of that country and I began a serious study
of photography to document my experiences while there. This fascination with cultural, social and political documentation
has continued to this day with my personal and artist photography reflecting my sense of community. In the late 1960's I enrolled
in college with a dual major of Sociology and Fine Art. In the more than 30 years that I have been producing art images, there
are cycles of recurring themes and a metamorphism of images and ideas. Some pieces are stand-alone images, while in others
I combined photos into juxtaposed or organically combined collages. While some of my photos are also photo journalistic others
are painterly. I work in traditional dark room printing as well as digitally created and manipulated and printed photography.
Artist statement courtesy of Oscar Castillo
Restrictions
Copyright has not been assigned to the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. All requests for permission to publish must be
submitted in writing to the Chicano Studies Research Center Library. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the
UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center as the owner of the physical item and is not intended to include or imply permission
from the copyright holder, which must also be obtained.