LOS ANGELES, CA.- "Like a message in a bottle cast off many years ago, these images re-emerge in 2009. They may recall, re-educate or simply evoke nostalgia over an era fleeing at an ever faster rate. It is hoped that much more is gained through the experience of seeing, experiencing and recalling that far away time. With this first exhibition, Garza has resurfaced, perhaps to begin anew where he left off. Recovering the message from the bottle, writing new messages, tossing the bottle back."
Luis C. Garza is the photographer whose images serve as the core of the exhibition and as the catalyst for its origin.
While studying film and theater arts at UCLA, he began his career as a photojournalist recording the tumultuous social events of the 1960s and 1970s. His images captured the attention of television executives, launching a new career as a writer, producer and director of an Emmy award-winning series and over 50 documentary projects and primetime shows for Los Angeles affiliates of ABC, NBC and CBS (including a one-hour special for the exhibition, Treasures of Mexico, broadcast live from LACMA). His endeavors then led him to the Mark Taper Forum, where he was appointed PR & Special Markets Director for the ground-breaking production of the acclaimed Luis Valdez play Zoot Suit. For the American Film Institute, he coordinated L.A. Freewaves, a first-ever exhibition of independent video artists. For the City of Los Angeles, he coordinated a two-week gala celebration of 1,500 artists from Los Angeles, Asia, Latin America, Oceania, and Antarctica at 100 venues. As a consultant for the Getty Conservation Institute over a three-and-a-half year period (19941997), he served as a liaison to the city, El Pueblo and the community at large, researching and facilitating the relations between all concerned in restoring to public view América Tropical, the seminal work of art created by David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Currently, he is curating an exhibition about Siqueiros and his murals created in Los Angeles that will be on view at the Museum of the American West during the fall of 2010.