West Chapter ConferenceSpeakers

William Camargo

Friday, November 07, 2025 @ 4:00pm,

Where Images Live: Photography, Place, and the Power of Presence

Saturday, November 08, 2025 @ 3:30pm,

On Displacement, Histories and Possibilities, Using Photography as a Decolonial Tool

In my photographic-based work, I address issues of gentrification, Chicanx/Latinx histories in a city, and the systemic erasure of Brown people through counter-narratives that amplify and extirpate hegemonic structures in local city narratives. Using photography, installation, public political performances, community archiving, and my role as an arts-based educator, I negotiate the legacies and disempowerment of brown people in my hometown of Anaheim, California, and in the history of Photography to insert artists of color within the canonical framework in photography. I respond to the city's archives through a historical art praxis that manifests as series-based artworks and strategies that address geographic places. Working with historically underrepresented narratives means dealing with the effects of systematic erasure and implementing a critical pedagogical approach with room for further investigation of forgotten stories. By using histories, legacies, and contemporary news stories, I challenge social constructs placed upon people that deal with historically racist policies and ideologies. I do this through liberatory actions that provoke new interpretations and elevate people's hidden histories to the forefront. These issues of erasure, structural racism, and displacement become universal to other places and histories with similar power structures.


William Camargo(b.1989, Santa Ana) William Camargo is a lens-based artist and educator raised in Anaheim, California. He is a lecturer in photography at Pasadena City College and Cal State Fullerton. William is the founder and curator of Latinx Diaspora Archives, an archive Instagram page that elevates communities of color through family photos. His work focuses on gentrification, police violence, and Chicanx/Latinx histories and comments on the hegemonic history of photography through archival research and performative interventions that live as photographs. William has held residencies at the Latinx Project at NYU, Light Work, TILT Institute in Philadelphia, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Penumbra Foundation in NYC, and Aurora Photo Center in Indianapolis. William's works are in several public and private collections, including S.F MOMA Library, Huntington Library, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Harvard Library, MSU Broad Art Museum, LACMA, and the J Paul Getty Museum.