Sam Quinones: Guadalupe Murals Talk at Union Station

Sam Quinones spent 17 years photographing the Virgin of Guadalupe wherever she showed up on a Los Angeles wall. On Saturday afternoon he brings those pictures to Union Station for a one-hour talk during Rare Books LA. Among the LA events this weekend, it's a quiet one, and it says more about the city than most.

The book behind the talk

The photos fill Our Lady of the Angels: The Virgin of Guadalupe on the Walls of Los Angeles, a bilingual book from Angel City Press with text in English and Spanish. Quinones started taking quick snapshots of the murals in 2009, and he kept at it. Most of the paintings he found sit on the outside walls of small businesses and down side alleys, far from any museum.

Rare Books LA's listing calls them urban altars, the spot where devotion and street art end up on the same stucco. The pictures matter now because the walls keep changing. A shop closes or a building gets sold, and a mural that stood for years can vanish in a weekend. The book keeps a record of a lot of them.

Who's talking

Quinones is a journalist and a former Los Angeles Times reporter, with five books of narrative nonfiction to his name. He lived in Mexico for 10 years as a freelance writer and wrote his first two books there. In 2004 he joined the Times, covering immigration, drug trafficking, gangs and neighborhood stories. He left the paper in 2014 to freelance again for National Geographic and the New York Times, among others. Columbia Journalism School gave him the Maria Moors Cabot prize in 2008 for his coverage of Latin America. He now writes the weekly Dreamland Newsletter on Substack.

The listing bills the hour as his photographs of the murals, so expect pictures on screen and the stories of the streets behind them.

Tickets and the fair

When: Saturday, October 3, 2 PM to 3 PM Where: Los Angeles Union Station, 800 North Alameda Street, Los Angeles Tickets: Free talk ticket on Eventbrite, with Rare Books LA admission

The talk ticket is free, but read the fine print. The listing says it's offered with admission to Rare Books LA Union Station, the antiquarian book fair set up in the station that weekend. You'll need a fair ticket too, and that's sold separately. Once you're inside, the dealers' booths give you something to browse before or after the talk.

Getting there

Union Station is about the easiest building in LA to reach without a car, which isn't true of most things to do in Los Angeles. Metro's A, B and D Lines stop here, and Metrolink and Amtrak trains arrive too. The station has paid parking if you'd rather drive.

When the talk wraps, walk across Alameda to El Pueblo and Olvera Street. La Placita, the church of Our Lady Queen of Angels, is a few minutes away, which makes a fitting stop after an hour of Guadalupe murals.

More Things Happening In Los Angeles are on the arts and culture calendar. The Downtown LA page covers what else is on near the station.