Hermosa

A Chemehuevi woman born in Los Angeles, Cara Romero is one of the most widely recognized Indigenous photographers working today. Her photographs explore themes of invisibility, survivance, and the power of place from an Indigenous perspective. This powerful portrait of her daughter Crickett Tiger at Hermosa Beach, dressed in the regalia of the coastal peoples of California, evokes the Chemehuevi mythos of Great Ocean Woman (Hutsipamamow) and the oral histories of Los Angeles and the California coast describing it as a place of creation, and as a sacred place. The photograph resulted from a series of images that appeared on billboards across Los Angeles in the summer and fall of 2021, created in collaboration with intertribal California First Peoples, Tongva artists, and cultural leaders. The images pay homage to the city of Los Angeles, which is today home to the largest population of Indigenous peoples in the nation, and to the original caretakers of this land—first known as Tovangaar.