Plush Pony

When Laura Aguilar produced her groundbreaking series Latina Lesbians (1987), she became recognized as a photographer who gave visibility and voice to an often invisible and marginalized population. This series of portraits of educated and professional Latina lesbians who shared their sexual identity in handwritten texts attached to their portraits was notable and frequently exhibited in diverse venues. Several years later, when Aguilar visited the Plush Pony, a small, Chicana lesbian bar in Northeast Los Angeles, she encountered a different lesbian community, working class, non-professional and butch. Setting up a small studio space in the bar, she offered to photograph the women and sell them prints for five dollars. Aguilar later recalled that the women agreed, signed permission forms, and received their prints, often without paying Aguilar. The series Plush Pony (1992) became one of Aguilar’s most popular and collectible series of portraits which convey the intimate, deep sense of community she found among these women, so often invisible to mainstream society.