4. Framing Places of Concealment, Invisibility, and Disarray in Christina Fernandez’s Manuela S-T-I-T-C-H-E-D

What is noticed in the street environment and what goes unnoticed? What can be viewed neutrally in the urban landscape, and by whom? What might the street environment conceal? Christina Fernandez’s Manuela S-T-I-T-C-H-E-D (1996–2000) poses these questions in photographs and an embroidery text panel that interrogate garment factories in the urban landscape of the Eastside of Los Angeles. Stuart Hall and Mark Sealy (2001) argue that ‘representation in its wider meaning modifies, augments or displaces the circumstantial […] to bring other kinds of order, meaning or “truth” to visibility’ (p. 38). This chapter examines the visual representations Fernandez’s mixed media work constructs around garment factories in the Eastside neighbourhood.¹ Histories and representations of communities are contested and critical, particularly in regard to minority communities, as Hodgkin and Radstone (2003) suggest. Therefore, I consider how Fernandez engages with the urban landscape of the Eastside and social and historical dimensions in the work. This chapter investigates how works portraying the urban landscape indicate the photographer’s own positionality regarding the places and communities they photograph.