We had the good fortune of connecting with Delana Delgado and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Delana, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I was born and raised in the South Bay and South East San Diego, and my work and personal identity has definitely been heavily influenced by my familial upbringing – as well as the communities I’ve been surrounded by my whole life. I spent the first 7 years of my life in Paradise Hills until we moved to Chula Vista, where my parents still reside. I was raised by two 1st generation Puerto Rican parents who were born and raised in the Bronx, New York who had just recently moved to California before I was born. A huge part of who I am today is a reflection of the strong and beautiful women who inspired me as a child – my mother as my beauty icon with her own business in gold hoops and bangles, my titi’s, cousins, and sisters with their strength, beauty and unconditional love, and my neighborhood friends who had a similar upbringing as I did and provided safety. Now, I find that I am most drawn to photographing the beautiful, independent, and brave womxn and friends I am lucky to be surrounded by today.

While my parents allowed me the freedom to express myself as a hobby, I was never encouraged to choose a career an artist, which I think is the case for many people who’s parents are immigrants or 1st generation folks living in America.. This caused me to suppress my artistic and musical abilities and to feel like it was foolish to pursue my dream of studying art in college. For this reason I put myself through college studying cultural anthropology and archaeology – which basically helped me understand my deep tie and admiration of all things culture, history, art, social justice and the many uses of art itself. I wouldn’t come to call myself an artist until 2021, when my work began getting published and people began referring to me as a photographer, which caught me very much off guard. It was then that I realized I had been conditioned not to see art as a career path and that I COULD get paid to take photos, to draw, to sing, and create in general. I noticed that when I started creating as an outlet, with love and intention behind my work, it showed. This was extremely transformative for me and gave me a better sense of what my path was, which is to utilize my abilities in photography, interpersonal communication, and artistic curation to better connect and provide a platform for under represented artists to have their stories shared and accurately represented in a way that benefits the local arts economy. My learned suppression of art, is what motivates me today to create first and foremost for myself.

Another impactful part of my upbringing was my father, and his relationship to story telling. He was an avid hobby photographer who – now that I look back, was adamant about documenting our family life on a 35mm Pentax camera. He had an eye for capturing both tender and funny moments. Looking back, I think my dad is the reason why I have such a natural attraction and inner need to document using film. I feel like I have an obsession with nostalgia and have always been fascinated by visual histories. I grew to have a great respect for the practice of film photography and have been expressing this since 6th grade when I began carrying around my own disposable cameras. This continued throughout high school, and eventually I began my own growing camera collection. I also dabbled with basic digital cameras in high school, but using film to honor those around me, the beautiful scenery of SD, and the story of my life, is much more intentional and special to me.

The subjects of my art and the way I approach it have both been completely influenced by my upbringing. First, the way that my parents never considered my art as a career path, (which could be seen as a set back because I could have potentially been much further “ahead” if they did), but instead, I like to see how that has reshaped the way I approach art – because I use it as a tool of liberation before even thinking of it as a way to make money or to gain notoriety. I think that’s important to me personally because it makes me feel good knowing my art is for personal happiness first and foremost, and then if those images do end up being shared, I want them to be used to tell a story, to bring accurate representation, and to make others proud as well.

The next way my upbringing has shaped my art is because the subject matter, people, bright colors, feelings, and symbolism I find myself most attracted to are things I was surrounded by in my family home, my culture and my community. They are the things that shaped my identity, helped me find myself, and things I think should be celebrated in our culture. Through the feedback I’ve received by sharing these images, I have realized how important it is that every person makes an attempt to tell their story or document their life through art. There will always be someone who doesn’t realize that they needed to see or hear what it is you have to share until you’re brave enough to share it.

The last part of my upbringing that has shaped my relationship to art is my anthropological background and studies. The study of anthropology has fueled my passion of decolonizing the way institutions instill economic barriers on underserved communities and how they make a career in art feel impossible to most lower income neighborhoods and people of color. My vision in my photography and most everything I do is rooted in creating visibility for the subcultures that raised me, and using my photos to translate a raw and unfiltered look into these identities with the same lens that a museum would with the art they show. I use my upbringing as motivation in my fight to provide visibility and a sense of assurance to local, self-taught artists who would never have before considered making money off their hobbies. I think no matter what background you come from, or what learned lessons your life has provided you, you are important, your story is important, and your existence and the history that brought you here today is important and deserves to be known and celebrated.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I wanna dedicate my shoutout to my boss, friend, mentor, and sister Dinah Poellnitz (@thehillstreetcountryclub) for finding me at just the right time and showing me (by her own similar path & example) that my dream of working in a gallery, organizing art shows and supporting underserved artists is what I’m meant to be doing, even without any of the institutionalized training it usually requires. Even more so, her encouraging me to take photography more seriously, and telling me I was an artist with a story that needed to be shared too. I feel like she not only gave me a chance, but she saved me from giving up on the practice of art, from giving up on ever becoming an “artist”. I have always said that everyone is born an artist when I would encourage others, but she helped ME accept it as well. Dinah has made her life’s work about all the same things that are important to me, which is arts accessibility, representation, social justice, and decolonizing traditional art pathways and normalizing radical community love and support. I’m so grateful to share a space with her and my Hill Street fam and I hope to see San Diego support Dinah and The Hill Street Country Club the same way they support big institutions and more mainstream artists… Because in reality, is it what we do at The HSCC that is the future of art and liberation in our communities.
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Website: www.thehillstreetcountryclub.org

Instagram: instagram.com/strawb.unny

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/delanadelgado/

Image Credits
Photo by Xayn Naz (@xayn.naz)
Photo by Gina Rosas (@r_o_s_a_s___)

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutSocal is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.