Hernandez is an artist of the first generation of Chicano and Chicana artists who participated in the Chicano art movement that began in the late 1960s as part of the Chicano civil rights movement. Her collection represents more than twenty-five years of involvement in many of the most important historical activities of this period, including the farmworkers' movement, the feminist movement, international environmental movements, and the art movement itself, including the visual, literary, and performing arts. A California Bay Area artist, Hernandez is primarily known as a printmaker and pastel artist. She has also created a lesser-known body of photographic and performance work.

Laura Aguilar is a photographer whose works are mostly portraits. Professor Chon Noriega of UCLA's Department of Film and Television writes that Aguilar's work documents "social groups and identities that remain invisible in mainstream culture: Latina lesbians, black couples, obese people, et al." She cooperates with her subjects so that "her work is not about power differentials between photographer and subject as is often, if implicitly, the case with...the social documentary tradition."