Artist documents Hispanic heritage in photographs
by Victoria Salazar
reporter

   The Mexican women are proud and powerful in their homes, a local photographer told art and photography students on NE Campus before spring break.
   Lupita Murillo Tinnen, a digital photography teacher at Richland College in Dallas, presented a portion of her collection of documentary photography, picturing the women of the Mexican culture and their homes.
   “I photographed different areas of the home although I don’t think I’ve photographed the restroom before,” she joked.
Her photographs are taken with a 4x5 camera that uses sheet film. Since the camera does not have a flash, she relies on natural light.
The pictures are also in black and white.
   “The color would take away from the image and draw the attention from the real beauty of the picture,” she explained.
   The Fort Worth native became interested in taking pictures of women in the Mexican culture while at East Texas State University, now Texas A&M Commerce.
   "Everyone was taking pictures of the same things out there. None of my classmates was documenting culture,” she said.
   She would come to Fort Worth to visit family’s and friends’ homes every Friday and Saturday for three years.
   Tinnen explained that the men did not like to have their homes photographed; therefore, she would go while they were at work.
   “The women let me do it because they knew I wasn’t going to exploit them. That is not what I was trying to do,” she said.
   Her photographs are mainly items that tie the American and Mexican cultures together.
   “I love to put Mexican things with American things,” she said.
   The women, Tinnen said, thought she was weird because of some items that she chose to photograph such as a mop, a light switch with a crucifix on it and bananas hanging on a rope.
   Tinnen wanted to be able to document the women, but the women would not let her take pictures of them in their everyday clothes.
   Tinnen said it took her awhile to realize that to photograph them all she had to do was ask them to dress up in their best clothes.
   Each photograph tells a story: how many children they have, how long they have been in the United States and how happy they are.
   In one photograph of a woman, the telephone is high on the wall to keep her children from getting to it.
   According to Tinnen, the way the homes are decorated depends on how long the women have been in the United States.
   “Most of these women left their home in Mexico and came here to be with their husbands. They did not know how to speak English and did not know how to drive, making them very unhappy,” she said.
   The pictures were taken years ago, and Tinnen said as more of these women become Americanized, it is harder to find the traditional Mexican items in their homes such as a tortilla press, which inspired her to make a giant wooden sculpture.
   “The times are changing, and I’m just glad I could document these things,” she said.
   As a child, Tinnen said she was once embarrassed of her culture. Now she embraces it.
   Her collection will be on display Sept. 9-Oct. 23 at the Dallas Museum for Contemporary Arts.