Backlot & Barrio

Jaime Roque follows photographer George Rodriguez through two LAs at once—red carpets and street marches.

Hollywood assignments put him beside movie stars and musicians; lunch breaks send him to East LA walkouts, the Chicano Moratorium, and UFW marches. One camera, two worlds. 

Jaime meets the people and places keeping that record alive. At the Getty Research Institute, curator Idurre Alonso opens thirty boxes—the first Chicano archive to enter the collection—and together they handle images that feel both historic and close to home. You see the craft: studio light brought to sidewalks, composition in the middle of a moving crowd, patience for the breath between chant and silence. In Santa Ana, photographer and educator William Camargo traces how George’s example shaped his own work—celebrity gigs by day, community documentation by night—and how a new generation is mapping their neighborhoods before the stories are erased. 

Join Jaime as he follows the images that built a city’s memory. Hear how archives, street corners, and studio lots weave one Los Angeles.

See more of George’s photography on the Getty website (https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/105RWY).

Special thanks to George Rodriguez, Idurre Alonso, William Camargo, Marcia Prentice, and Nicole Belle.