One of the wondrous things about the culture of our immigrant nation is how you can find expressions of traditions from all over the world here—especially in our cities. In the exhibit “Celebrate/Demonstrate: Photographs of Global LA by Cindy Bendat” at the University of California, Los Angeles’s Fowler Museum from Jan. 17 to May 8, 2016, the California photographer documents three annual international traditions as celebrated around that city (plus an immigrants’ rights protest). The festivals are about “parents teaching their children who they are and where they came from,” Bendat has said. “They are about pride. They are about joy.”
Cindy Bendat. Guatemalan San Simón Festival 2010, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles. Pictured here and at top is the late October fiesta for the Guatemalan folk saint who is said to be a combination of the pre-Columbian Maya god Mam with Spanish Catholicism.Cindy Bendat. Masked dancers at the Guatemalan San Simón Festival 2008, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles.Cindy Bendat. Ethiopian Timket Festival 2012, Los Angeles. This Orthodox Epiphany festival, in mid-January, traditionally celebrates the baptism of Jesus with participants reenacting and rewnewing their own baptism.Cindy Bendat. Priests at the Ethiopian Timket Festival 2011, Los Angeles.Cindy Bendat. Ethiopian Timket Festival 2012, Los Angeles.Cindy Bendat. “Day Without an Immigrant” boycott and amnesty demonstration 2006, Downtown Los Angeles. It was, as the museum notes, “one of many demonstrations held in cities across the country in response to anti-immigration legislation passed by the United States House of Representatives.”Cindy Bendat. Cambodian New Year celebration 2010, Khemara Buddhikarama Temple, Long Beach. Chaul Chnam Thmey, celebrated here in mid-April at Cambodian Buddhist temple, traditionally marks the end of the harvest season and is celebrated (at least in part) with Bhuddist rites.
