In this episode of PARA/normal Borders, Ed Gomez speaks with Amina Cruz, a Los Angeles–based photographer and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the outsider cultures of brown queer punks throughout the Americas. Amina shares how years of analog training have shaped her deeply introspective, meticulous approach to both film and digital photography.
Ed and Amina trace the expansive scope of her work — from still, sweeping landscapes to vibrant portraits of queer cultural remix, joy, and community. Amina also discusses her unique approach to cyanotype printing: a ritualistic process of bleaching and staining that produces surreal, layered images bathed in blue.
Through this transformative act of image obscuration, Amina untethers her photographs from their real-world subjects. She creates images that are eerily familiar, revealing new worlds within, or beyond, our own.
Finally, Amina opens up about a lifetime of paranormal encounters experienced in the liminal state between waking and dreaming, and how these moments of altered awareness activated an intuition that informs her artistic practice.
Amina is currently featured in the Getty’s Queer Lens exhibition, which chronicles the history of queer photography from the invention of the medium in the nineteenth century to the present day. The exhibition closes on September 28th.
The PARA/normal Borders Podcast is made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
See more from Amina!
Website: https://www.aminacruz.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aminacruz.studio
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Photo Credits and Image Sources:
- [5:25] Portraits from Amina Cruz’s They are Their Own photography series. Courtesy of the artist.
- [11:20] Photograph of dancers wearing botas picudas or botas tribaleras, long pointy boots worn by those in the tribal guarachero, or trival, music scene. Courtesy of Time Magazine. Image credit Alex Troesch.
- [11:28] Photograph of typical goth cumbia attire. Courtesy of LA Public Press. Image credit Rigo Bonilla Jr.
- [11:51] Photograph from Amina Cruz’s They are Their Own photography series. Courtesy of the artist.
- [13:56] Cyanotype photograph from Amina Cruz’s Our Desire is Our Power photography series. Courtesy of the artist.
- [15:02] Cyanotype photograph from Amina Cruz’s Our Desire is Our Power photography series. Courtesy of the artist.
- [17:37] Photograph from Amina Cruz’s exhibition as we exit, we enter at No Moon LA. Courtesy of the artist.
- [43:31] Cover of catalogue for Getty’s Queer Lens exhibition, featuring Amina Cruz. Courtesy of Getty. Image credit Diana Davies.
Selected resources and recommended reading for further research:
- ‘‘We Paid For This Town”: The Legacy of Chicanx Punk in LA by Rosa Boshier
- Centering LGBTQ Women of Color as the Face of Punk, an interview with Dr. Marlén Ríos-Hernández, Xicana Punk Musicologist and Assistant Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton
- Mexipunk by Rubén Ortiz-Torres
- Love and Rage: Autonomy in Mexico City’s Punk Scene by Kelley Tatro
- Cyanotypes: The origins of photography by Laura Bagnall
- Cyanotype prints for beginners | National Museums Liverpool
- Queer Lens: A History of Photography at the Getty