Graciela Iturbide, White Fence, 2023

During the day of 2 May 1986, images were taken that later became part of the book A Day in the Life of America. Graciela Iturbide was part of the team of photographers who, over the course of twenty-four hours, recorded everyday life in different locations in the United States. Her contribution was a portrait taken in a flat in the Boyle Heights neighbourhood of East Los Angeles, California. There she was greeted by a group of Mexican Americans, mostly women, affiliated with the White Fence gang.

That initial encounter laid the foundations for a long-standing friendship and the construction of a photographic narrative that could well be described as the intermittent chronicle of a day spanning thirty-three years, from 1986 to 2019.