One Picture

I’ve been shooting street photography digitally in Los Angeles for about 10 years. I’ve amassed hundreds of images that express what I see and have wanted to capture in this city. I’ve recently taken to shooting film, however, with a Leica rangefinder and various lenses.

I’m not here to advocate some special magic around Leica. But film is another story entirely.  And even though not all the images here were shot on film, exposed film is such a fundamentally different object from a digital image that I feel like everything I’ve done digitally might merely be preparation for what I’m going to do with film. I hope so.

Regarding this shot. I think images should require something from the person who is looking upon those images. A photograph doesn’t or shouldn’t have to be obvious in order to be something that holds some significant value. I think this image should be taken as an example of that. I don’t want to say much more about the picture itself. It either makes a statement to you or not. It made a statement to me.  

My plan is to shoot more images like this that are attempting to make statements (even if only to me) that express the humanity of my subjects and hint at some of the complexities of their lives and their predicaments and the costs of their struggles as shown on their faces.

There are so many cliches surrounding the presence of what is largely a Mexican American immigrant base in California and the United States.

I’m not expressing a political perspective with what I hope to be an ongoing photographic project. But the Hispanic immigrant population, their families, their contributions, and their various ‘roles’ in what makes up Los Angeles is so complex that the cliches and the level of understanding around the country of their presence here amounts to an affront to true cultural understanding and progress.

The function and burden of being Mexican in Los Angeles, or El Salvadorian or Guatemalan, be it as an illegal or as a someone born of legal immigrants, is, with rare exception, to live a life that makes you collectively part of the cheap labor engine that enables so many here to live crisp clean unburdened lives. Los Angeles is a story that is built, not just historically, but every single day, upon the labor of this population base.

Thanks for looking, and long live FILM.

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