Looking back on the train-wreck that was social media in 2018, it may be comforting to point out a few bright spots — one of those being the community-sourced photo archives of Guadalupe Rosales: Veteranas and Rucas, and Map Pointz, both of which started as Instagram accounts. Little Big Man Books has published a portion of the Map Pointz archive, an overlooked history of the Latino/a SoCal party crew and rave scenes that proliferated in and around Los Angeles in the 1990s. As with so many other formerly overlooked photo archives, Map Pointz and Rosales’ ongoing work fill in a missing piece of cultural history.
Michael Schmelling is a photographer based in Los Angeles. His most recent book of photographs, Your Blues, was published by Skinnerboox and The Ice Plant in 2018.