Annie Lopez

Annie Lopez (born 1958) is a Chicana visual artist working in photography and sculpture.

Biography Lopez was born in Phoenix, Arizona to Mexican immigrant parents and is the 3rd eldest of five children. At the age of 13, Lopez began to take an interest in photography and would initially use a Kodak Brownie camera to take pictures of her family. Lopez’s printing process involves laying a negative image over primed paper, covering it in an iron based mixture, and placing it under direct sunlight where the image develops with a cyan blue tint.

Favorite Things features cyanotype images printed on tamale wrapping paper that have been sewn together into the form of a dress. Lopez strategically chose photos where each woman was posing suggestively. Lopez created this piece as a response to the signing of SB 1070, which was an Arizona law granting officials the right ask people they suspected to be immigrants for their papers as well as granting them the right to arrest immigrants without a warrant or probable cause. Lopez intended for this piece to be a crude way of showcasing how invasive the SB 1070 law was. The bathing suit featured prints of Lopez’s official government documents, such as her birth certificate, and award certificates she received as a child.