Op-Ed: Stations of the cross on L.A.’s streets

The Easter story — which will be retold this week from pulpits around the world — also unfolds outside church sanctuaries, in museum galleries and throughout the iconography of western culture. In the Los Angeles barrios that Camilo José Vergara documents, artists named Manuel Cruz, Tim Morgan, Chill and Nuke have taken it to the streets — on the edges of parking lots, along alleyways and the sides of shops — a forthright public statement of faith and hope, folk art and graffiti, commerce and the sacred.

Camilo José Vergara’s photographic archive is housed in the Library of Congress in Washington. He is the first photographer to receive the U.S. National Humanities Medal. His latest book is “Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto.” camilojosevergara.com

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