Working within the traditions of social documentary photographers, such as Lewis Hine, Christina Fernandez uses photography to examine personal communities, most often within the fabric of the urban landscape. People and their stories, representing primarily the myriad immigrant experiences of Mexican and Central American populations, play a central role in her art. She hopes to blend personal narrative with the more impersonal writing of "history."

Fernandez has already received substantial artistic recognition. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout California. Venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Mexican Museum, San Francisco, the Pomona College Museum of Art, the San Jose Museum of Art, etc. In addition, her work has been featured at the Bronx Museum of Art, New York, the Los Alamos Historical Society, New Mexico and the Canal Isabel Segunda in Madrid, Spain. The concerns of this artist are central to the mission of The Latino Museum. Fernandez is also an educator, Assistant Professor of Photography at Cerritos College in Norwalk, California.

Curator Rebecca McGrew of the Pomona College Museum of Art writes about the Lavanderia Series: "With this current body of work, Fernandez conflates her interests in exploring the personal and historical, utilizing a formal, frontal aesthetic, and expanding the documentary traditions of photography. Photographers have long been interested in labor, from Lewis Hine's early twentieth century documentation of underage workers in factories to Dorothea Lange's photographs illustrating the harsh Depression realities of rural America. With Lavanderia, Fernandez extends this documentary tradition to look at domestic labor.