by Alejandra Castillo, Anisha Bhat, and Jackie Flores

When Oscar Castillo first began college, he never expected to become an artist. Little did he know, he would soon go on to build an illustrious career as a freelance photographer.

Castillo was born in 1945 in El Paso, Texas. Castillo remembers growing up in a very bicultural environment. He states that both Spanish and English were equally common in his household. Furthermore, much of his extended family lived in Juarez, Mexico, and he recalls weekend trips across the border to visit family and to go to the mercado with his grandmother.

As an adolescent, Castillo and his mother moved to Los Angeles, where he completed high school. While attending Los Angeles Valley College, he decided to enlist in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. Stationed in Japan, Castillo worked as a Radio Telegraph Operator, manipulating vital communications equipment. To fill his free time, Castillo bought his very first camera. Inspired by the beauty of Japan, he took hundreds of photos, and his love for photography blossomed.

Soon, Castillo was accepting his first paid job as a photographer. He worked for his professor at Cal State Northridge, Rudy Acuna. The job involved going out into the community and taking photos for a social studies textbook.

Castillo later became involved with the Chicano political movement in the 1970’s, the revolutionary photographs he captured of the numerous protests and of the Vietnam War moratorium were the result of his “labor of love”. No one paid him for those photographs. Due to his love of photography, he was moved to capture the historical moments in a beautiful and artistic way. Today, his work represents some of the only photographic record of this iconic period of Chicano history. Castillo states, “We as a community tend to be invisible sometimes, but the images that I’ve caught of people are icons. In the dominant culture, you might have icons like Marilyn Monroe, she’s an icon of pop culture. Or Frank Sinatra, or Mount Rushmore. Whereas in our culture, we have our own icons, and I try to capture them.”

As a freelance photographer, Castillo has offered his services to numerous high-profile corporate clients. Some of these clients include Vidal Sassoon, the Seven Up Bottling Company, Steven’s Steakhouse, and many more. He has also worked for Cal Poly Pomona, taking photographs for children’s books and producing educational material, for various local politicians, taking their official campaign photos, and for the City of Pico Rivera, where he currently works.

Castillo notes, however, that the life of a freelance photographer can be rough. “You have to hustle, you have to get your clients,” he says, and often he finds that working for a corporation limits his creative freedom. “Sometimes… I just gotta bite the bullet, and I take the picture. It’s just something you have to do. You can walk away from it, but you won’t be working there for very long if you do something like that.”

For the most part, though, Castillo thoroughly enjoys his corporate work. He
emphasizes the pride he feels when he is able to compose a photo for a company in an artistic way, a way that speaks to his talent and vision as a photographer. “I always try to put my best foot forward. I like to put out my best work, to do something I’m proud of. Even though it’s not my personal stuff, I try to make it a part of me somehow. I demand excellence in myself and others. It all becomes part of me somehow or the other”

In addition to his political work, social work, and his corporate work as a freelancer, Castillo also continues to take on personal projects as an artist.

A gallery show is a lot more personal, like personal statements. This is important to me and I don’t really have to worry about what anybody else thinks. This is what I feel, this is what I want to do and this is what I’m going to do,” he says. “And sometimes people say, ‘well that’s great I want to buy it’ and I say ‘well that’s great because I want to sell it’. And that’s very gratifying; recently I sold twelve of my works to the Smithsonian Institute… and they’re going to be in the Smithsonian institute forever.

Ultimately, the legacy of Oscar Castillo is rich and multifaceted. No matter where he has worked, and for whom, he has always remained true to his artistic vision—an artist at heart. For Castillo, his camera is a way to transcend superficial labels and truly immerse himself in a community. He remarks,

Sometimes I’ll exhibit something and I’ll say, well, this is kind of me being invisible… You could say, you don’t know who took them, because they are very universal…I think it’s important to be a universal person, to be a part of the world without geographical boundaries or socio-political boundaries. Just be a human.