Amy elkins
In A Place Where We Are in the Sun, Amy Elkins—an eighth-generation Angeleno—traces her blended Indigenous, Mexican, and European ancestry across Southern California. Drawing on family archives, intergenerational stories, and early Alta California records, her research follows histories of migration, opportunity, assimilation, loss, and resilience that ultimately lead her back to the land between Lompoc and Los Angeles. By physically altering and rephotographing archival family photographs, she transforms black-and-white pictures into layered, porous collages where past and present meet and figures and environments begin to merge, opening space to consider how identity tied to place, is formed, disrupted, and redefined across generations.
Thoughts on the lab
I was able to print an entire exhibition, have studio visits, make new friends and be a part of a really fun art/photo community in Chicago. One of my studio visits led to an exhibition at the High Museum and helped shape the book I self-published Black is the Day, Black is the Night.