Love as an Act for Resistance: Questions for Fedella Lizeth
Fedella Lizeth is a local analog photographer who commands space as a spiritual successor to the Chicanismo Movement of the 1960s and 1970s that kindled a cultural consciousness amongst Mesoamerican immigrant communities throughout the country. Born to a Nicaraguan father and Italian mother, she has intimate knowledge of what it feels like to be both a first and second-generation American, to exist in a country with contradictory values that both condemns and champions immigrants as the backbone of the United States.
In her work, she documents and lovingly celebrates the enduring push towards self-determination and self-advocacy for communities like Logan Heights and Barrio Logan that have maintained a struggle against gentrification and industrialization for over 80 years.
Despite the fracturing of Logan Heights and Barrio Logan with the construction of Interstate 5 and the Coronado Bridge in the 1960s, the symbol of Aztlàn (Southwestern United States as the mythical homeland of the Astecas) endures under the bridge at Chicano Park and in the hearts of artists like Fedella who refuse to blend in and assimilate.
Santana and her mother Juliana in Sacramento, CA.
Safelight: The construction of the Coronado Bridge in the 1960s signaled a flashpoint for the Chicanismo art movement in Barrio Logan. How has this cultural consciousness influenced your photography and the way you perceive the economic changes to the neighborhood?
Fedella: When you grow up, like I did, with something as distinctive and loud as the enticing murals of Chicano Park, it can be easy to understand how the cultural consciousness behind the creation of the park, formed in retaliation against city lies and corruptness, influences not only my work but other artists and creators within San Diego. Since I was a little girl, I walked through Chicano Park holding my Papi’s hand, staring at these ginormous dedications to people that have fought for certain liberations that myself and my family have today.
Chicano Park Day (2024).
The reason that I honor the city I grew up in so much with my work is because I quickly realized how our experiences here are much more different than other Chicanx/Latine communities in the States. I started activating a new way of looking inward into my home with my camera. San Diego is one of the country’s most significant cities neighboring the U.S./Mex. Border, ours being one of the most crossed borders in the country.
My photography acts as a tool for the reinstatement of who I believe to be the true people of San Diego. The city I pay homage to is filled with hard working folks of all different backgrounds. A majority of our communities, like Barrio Logan, are fueled by these people; typically marginalized communities that have been profited off of and challenged for way too long.
Owner in her soccer apparel shop on Imperial Avenue in Logan Heights (2023).
With the current economic changes in Barrio Logan, we are witnessing another round of displacement and a sense of destructiveness to the community that has fought so hard to be seen in the first place.
Now, it is being watched for profit.
As long as I have a camera and the ability to photograph, I commit to documenting the people who make this community what it is, while uplifting the art and cultural movements that were started by us for us. It is the foundational joy within the creation of Chicano Park over 50 years ago that taught generations to come, including mine, how to alchemize the traumas from the oppressions of the city and turn it into something beautiful, outstanding, and resilient. There is resistance in our existence and that is the basis of my work as I continue to document our people.
Local artist Angelica on Commercial Street in Logan Heights (2022).
Safelight: With the resurgence of amplified xenophobia and fear surrounding mass deportations in San Diego, how do you believe your work will evolve in the communities that you capture?
Fedella: My lasting intention as a photographer has been to document the existence of the disempowered in San Diego and give representation to those that are overlooked and unseen, contrary to the botched, tourist-appealing image of nice beaches and consortium playgrounds.
There are people in Central San Diego, Southeast San Diego, East San Diego, South Bay, and North County that are going to be and have been most affected by things such as xenophobia and mass deportations that need attention now.
One project I’m currently working on developed out of my concerns for those that are affected most during the current mass deportations. That is, identifying and photographing the Central American Diaspora in San Diego.
I am a first-generation Central American woman with familial roots in Nicaragua. When the current administration moved in with their xenophobic policies on its first day, I started to think about the 2016 Migrant Caravan that had moved from Central America all the way to our border here in San Diego. This prompted me to look into what the demographic is like today of the undocumented folks here in the States, as for a long time the majority of migrants were known to be from Mexico. I discovered that has changed. Between 2014-2023, 43% of undocumented immigrants that arrived to the U.S. were Central Americans, with 19% being Mexican. Before, it was 51% Mexican and 20% Central American.
This new information impacted me a lot, forcing me to look inward into my own understanding of why my family had to leave Nicaragua and turn to the U.S. for opportunity. I began to consider why others had to leave too, almost 50 years later, asking the big U.S. for the same thing.
Fedella’s sister Nevaeh in front of a lowrider (2023).
While I am grateful to be here and all the hard work my own family put in, it comes with a huge cost of assimilation and internalization. Therefore, I took it upon myself to develop an investigative series about Central Americans in San Diego; exploring themes of how migration, displacement, war traumas and the current state of the U.S. shape our unique experiences here. I have only just begun this project, by having photographed a handful of individuals where we’ve been able to open up a dialogue about our stories and any current pressing matters.
Throughout these conversations, I have taken notice of how proud we are, experiencing pride through intimate experiences under the safety blanket of our homes with family. To be able to now open up a space where myself and others can bond has been emotional and is currently allowing me to feel less isolated. That assimilation process that begins once families migrate to the U.S., is meant to bring harm into our home, where things like xenophobia, racism, and homophobia begin to be internalized. It is this process that makes our experiences distinctive. I am aware now that many more people needed this project just as much as I did.
A man at the La Vuelta Car Cruise in Barrio Logan (2023).
That is what my photography does. It is meant to be the people’s voice. To reclaim our right to speak up, to storytell, to heal, and to learn to love ourselves. I will maintain these values unapologetically in retaliation against the discrimination by the current administration and whatever comes after.
Safelight: Your images also seem to depict the richness in spirit amongst the systemically disadvantaged, never pouring salt in the wound of poverty and oppression. Where do you derive your strength and optimism ever-present in your work?
Fedella: I personally don't find it helpful to fixate on what makes communities like mine marginalized or disadvantaged, because for me this is a binary way of speaking and we do not live in a binary kinda world. Yes, we are an oppressed peoples but we are also a free people. Free in the way that we continue to find each other during our darkest moments. There is resistance in our joy and in the way we come together. To love and celebrate one another is much more powerful than we think, because then we’re allowing a foundation of communion to fill up the room. My strengths come from living through something difficult and knowing that I have that loving community to lean on during those times. And teaching others who may be going through a tough time, that they have community too. You are never alone. You should never be afraid to ask for help.
Chicano Park Day (2023).
My optimism comes from all the wisdom I have learned from elders and those that have come before me. From listening to my neighbors and understanding that everything passes and everything is meant to be overcome. I have watched and witnessed someone take a beating in every systematic way possible and still choose to pour back into themselves with whatever they got and sometimes that just looks like giving themselves a hug. Our happiness is our power, our hope is our weapon, and our love will be our revolution. I photograph for love.
Vendor at the El Chopo punk swap meet in Mexico City (2025).
Safelight: What inspires you to create, and why has photography continued to be the source of your artistic expression?
Fedella: I mean, honestly and authentically, people are my inspiration. I photograph people. I listen to people. I watch people. I support people. They support me. I am inspired by the mundane and the extravagant ways in which we live our lives. I am attracted to the nooks of our features and the quirks in our laughter. It might just be the light that we as humans are that has me in a chokehold. The capabilities that we all carry or the talents that vary. The source of my artistic expression is my deep fondness of life, the hard and the easy. When I ask to photograph someone, I notice a sense of confusion, they – for a quick second – ask themselves “why does she want to photograph me? What am I to a camera?” and then, to see their body language change, allow themselves to try, and to accept me and the language of the camera is a really beautiful seamless transition into the first act of letting love in. It’s the fact that we have learned to make it ten times harder for us to let love in, and with an oppressive system like ours, who are we to blame? I will force us to learn to let love in again.
A man holds his kitten in front of the home of Fedella’s grandmother in Bari, Italy (2024).
