UCLA Center for the Study of Women

Her photography deals mostly with portraiture, documenting social groups and identities that remain invisible in mainstream culture: Latina lesbians, black couples, obese people. This work shares certain similarities with the provocative portraits by Jock Sturges and Sally Mann, especially in terms of the high degree of collaboration involved. But Aguilar collaborates with subjects who are her peers so that her work is not about power differentials between photographer and subject as is often, if implicitly, the case with Sturges, Mann, and the social documentary tradition itself.