A Satiating Conversation with Louis Jacinto
Photo Credit: Louis Jacinto, Self-Portrait, 2021
Louis Jacinto is an American artist and founder of onodream gallery based in Los Angeles. Louis began photographing in Los Angeles in 1975 and is noted for his iconic images of the Punk Rock music scene in Los Angeles from the late 1970s. While several books from that seminal period in American music have since appeared, Jacinto’s images captured highly influential yet overlooked musicians, including Nervous Gender, The Know, The Go-Go’s with original member Margot Olivera, and The Bags, among others. He has published several books of his photographs, including PUNKROCK LOSANGELES, Edge of the World: Self-Portraits 1976 – 2007, GRONKPATSSIPARTY, The Bags, Hope Fading, The Beatles In Los Angeles, The Umbrellas Project, and Patti Smith ‘78. He is also noted for his imagery of the art collective ASCO from the 1970s and 80s; his images of the social movements regarding gang-involved youth and the gay and lesbian community are noted; and his landscapes and artists’ portraits.
Since 1980 Jacinto has exhibited throughout the greater Los Angeles area as well as at the Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, American University Museum, Washington, D.C.; El Museo de las Artes, Guadalajara, Mexico; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; Claremont Museum of Art, Claremont, California; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts; Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, California; University Museum of Contemporary Art, Mexico City. I had the pleasure and honor of asking Louis about the origins of his gallery onodream, what inspires him to create, how he knows it is the right time to capture an image through the lens, and so much more.
UZOMAH: How do you think the internet has changed how art and music have been traditionally accessible to the public? What are the benefits and downfalls?
LOUIS: With the invention of the Internet, and its current global accessibility, both art and music have the possibility to reach such a wide audience. Also, artists of all kinds – visual, film, and music – can now create their work and expose it to a global audience without the permission of anyone.
U: What were the origins of your onodream Gallery? What are some of your goals and contributions you want it to make, not just in the art world?
L: I’ve always wished to run an art gallery, but I don’t have that kind of funding. Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down in 2020 I realized that I am punk and don’t need permission from anyone to do what I wish. So, I opened onodream Gallery, an online-only exhibition space.
I don’t show my own artworks in this gallery, only the work of other artists. onodream Gallery does not do group shows. I give each artist a 3-month show. I open the show with 10 artworks and a critical essay on the artist’s work. In the second month of the exhibition, I add 10 more artworks, and in the 3rd month, the final 10 artworks, along with an exhibition catalog of the art show.
Because the gallery is an online-only exhibition space, I don’t show all 30 art pieces at once, hoping that the public will continue to come back and view the additional artworks that are added each month of the exhibition.
I’ve heard it said that by being evolutionary one becomes revolutionary.
My work may or may not start a revolution to improve the world, but it has revolutionized how I act, think, and see.
Madonna Noir, 2014
U: What inspires you to create?
L: I’ve been told I have the photographic “eye”; the ability to see the world through my camera’s lens and capture to share with others; share something that others may not have seen.
U: What do you think makes music art?
L: Music, like the other arts, comes from the idea that is then created and shared with the world.
Mask, 2020
U: How do you choose a book featured on Book of the Month?
L: I have published several books on my photography. I try to highlight one of them by mentioning it in my emails. I change the book every few months. It's a good way for anyone I write to be exposed to my books electronically.
U: Can you discuss where you think Punk is now from when you first entered the Punk scene?
L: I am glad to see that punk has returned to its roots. When punk began in the 1970s in Los Angeles, everyone was there, both in the audience and in the bands – boys, girls, queer, straight, black, brown, yellow, red, and white.
But beginning in the 1980s straight white skinhead boys began to emerge and become a bit more dominant.
Today, I see young bands returning to being all inclusive of everyone – those younger punk musicians have only grown up in a diverse world, so it’s not common for them to be just to be a part of one group of people.
Mama Mime, 1981
U: How do you know when it is the right time to capture something through a lens?
L: When I first began to photograph, digital had not yet been invented. I used film and being in college at the time, I was poor. So, I had to make every shot count because I could not afford to shoot endless rolls of film hoping to get at least one good image.
This was the perfect training for my photographic “eye”. Even today, when I use a digital camera, I don’t take endless shots; I know it would make my “eye” become lazy thinking I’m sure I’ll get one good shot out of the many I take of the same thing. I prefer, still, to take one, may two shots of the subject, and then move on.
Alice Bag, Hong Kong Cafe, 1979
U: How vital are clubs like The Hong Kong Café in Los Angeles' Chinatown, giving bands an uncensored and free outlet to perform and roam artistically?
L: While the Hong Kong Café and Madame Wong’s in Los Angeles’ Chinatown were open in the 1970s and 1980s, they were a lifeline to each other. The bands needed venues to perform. The Chinatown venues had been struggling to stay open. So the bands provided paying customers, and the Chinatown venues provided a stage for the punk bands.
U: Do music and art intersect?
L: Music and art intersect on stage. The band goes on stage and performs the songs they have created. But the band is also giving the audience visual art – their clothes and how their bodies move inside of those clothes, regardless of the genre of music.
Gold Descending, 2014
U: What songwriter in the punk scene lyrics to you is the most poetic?
L: Of all the punk bands that I have followed, I find the lyrics composed by the band X are the most poetic. Their first 3 albums are masterworks. The stories they tell are universal.
U: You have captured many movements and cultural times that have shaped this nation and the world throughout your storied career, which has been both the most captivating and challenging to capture?
L: Although the liberation for queer people - Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender - began many years before I began to photograph, what did queer people do with this new found liberation was probably the most important.
After the first March On Washington for Gay Rights in 1979, several queer Los Angeles residents who attended that event came back energized and wished to carry that energy back home. At the time, in the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Echo Park, Silver Lake and Los Feliz, queer people were being attacked by Latino youth who were involved in street gangs.
What was decided was to celebrate everyone in those communities by shutting down the main thorough fare that ran through those neighborhoods and having a street fair with food vendors, artists, community organizations, and musicians. But instead of barring the gang-involved youth, they were asked to serve as security for the fair.
These youth have an allegiance to their neighborhoods, so the fair organizers asked them to show that allegiance by asking them to also participate in a very important way for the community. Working with local youth organizations, the 5 neighborhood youth gangs called a truce and worked side by side with each other and everyone else from the community, including the queer community that they had previously been attacking.
The police opposed the event saying that there could never be a truce between these gangs and there would be a blood bath in the streets. But the organizers persisted and in 1980 the first annual Sunset Junction Street was held.
There was no fighting, no bloodshed; only a celebration of the most diverse communities in Los Angeles. Those neighborhoods showed the rest of Los Angeles that we can get along as our commonalities far outnumber any differences.
Los Angeles today is a much better city because of the work by all of those individuals made 42 years ago.
I was the official photographer for the Sunset Junction Street Fair in 1982 and 1983.
U: What is next for you artistically?
L: I will continue to create new work. I wish to do some digital collage portraits and am still working out that in my mind.
I will continue to add new images to my current body of works.
I will continue to exhibit the work of other artists in onodream Gallery.
And, of course, I will continue to take lots of self-portraits!
For more information about Louis's artwork, please visit his site. For more information about the onodream Gallery, please visit the site and also give a follow on Instagram.
