When it comes to neighborhoods in South or East LA, the news, images, and stories we see most often in mass media tend to be narrow in their focus—if they’re acknowledged at all.
“If you look historically at movies or images or news stories that are talking about Boyle Heights or East L.A., the focus right away is going to be gang members or the type of cultural violence that happens,” says Lucia Torres, executive director of Las Fotos Project.
According to Torres, that’s because those communities have so rarely been able to tell their own stories. “You don't hear the voices of the young people who are really making an impact. You don't hear the voices of the elders in our community,” she says. And at Las Fotos Project, she says, “we want to really change that narrative.”
Las Fotos is a nonprofit founded in 2010 by LA photographer Eric V. Ibarra that provides free photography programs for girls and gender-expansive youth from communities of color. The project has several aims: to teach kids a skill that can build their confidence, to provide potential career pathways, and to elevate the voices of marginalized people through young people from those communities.
In short, the organization aims to level the playing field for youth from historically disenfranchised communities—a natural fit for the Equity pillar of Angel City’s impact model.
“Oftentimes opportunities for higher education, especially in creative careers, have not been afforded to communities of color and people of color,” Torres continues. “One thing we aim to do is provide access to folks from communities of color to any training that they may have not been able to access in their general education, like public school, higher education, or through other community programs, which oftentimes charge a tuition fee.”
Las Fotos provides three programs: Esta Soy Yo, Digital Promotoras, and Creative Entrepreneurship Opportunities, or CEO. “Esta Soy Yo is our self-exploratory program and experimental photography program,” says Torres. “Digital Promotoras is our photojournalism and community advocacy program. And then CEO is our creative economy program.”
In partnership with Crypto.com, Angel City and Las Fotos teamed up to get four young photographers—Adria Marin, Gabriela Salazar, Sawyer Sariñana, and Ketzally Alcala, all participants in CEO—pitchside to shoot ACFC games at the Banc alongside a Las Fotos mentor.
“There were always two of them working on the pitch alongside some of the photographers on the field, both women and male-identified photographers, who allowed them to shadow them or work with them,” says Helen Alonzo Hurtado, Las Fotos Project’s social enterprise director. In addition to shooting the action on the field, they also got to spend time in the stands, documenting the supporter culture in the north end of the stadium. (AngelCity.com featured some of the students’ work earlier this year.)
All the participants were interested in sports photography, and some were already part of the Angel City community. “Each of them had their own unique experience within the project and learned and grew as photographers,” says Alonzo Hurtado. “Sports photography requires a whole different level of understanding, flexibility, and another skill set.”
“I learned so much being beside professional photographers and my mentor, like how to quickly adjust my settings according to the situation,” wrote Salazar in a personal reflection on the program. “I like to capture people’s energy, which I was also able to do when taking pictures of the crowd and of the power these women demonstrated on the field.”
Photo by Sawyer Sariñana.
Las Fotos employs a teaching methodology called participatory photography. In essence, it’s about offering community members the tools to tell their own story, rather than having a narrative imposed on them by an outsider. It’s an alternative to what Torres describes as the too-common “anthropological, journalistic view, where people parachute into communities, grab a story and then bounce after that.”
Las Fotos offers an alternative. In Esta Soy Yo, the organization’s flagship program, students learn basic photography skills from professional mentors while exploring a specific theme related to identity. For example, the 2022 class created an exhibition called (Well)being, in which they explored what wellness, both physical and mental, meant to themselves and those around them.
Where Esta Soy Yo is about self-reflection, Digital Promotoras gives students the chance to document their communities. Homeland, that program’s most recent exhibition, highlights participants’ neighborhoods and explores the ways ever-shifting cityscape can define the communities who live there. One photographer, 14-year-old Ashley Guzman, highlighted the murals in her Boyle Heights neighborhood. Another, 18-year-old Eunice Shin, chose candid shots of Angelenos at work—a food vendor at the beach, a woman making pupusas at a market.
In addition to inviting youth to shoot home games, Angel City sponsored Las Fotos’s annual fundraiser, the Foto Awards, in 2022. For the awards, “we ask the community, the public, to nominate photographers who they feel are representative of our programs,” says Torres. Six awards are given out to photographers making an impact in the areas of self-expression, community, and career—which correspond to Esta Soy Yo, Digital Promotoras, and CEO, respectively—with a youth and adult awardee in each category.
In partnership with Crypto.com, the young photographers who shot ACFC games this season are learning about digital art. “We're going to be doing a unique workshop led by a female-identified NFT artist,” says Alonzo Hurtado. “They're going to work with our students to learn what an NFT is, and get involved in a space that also is traditionally male dominated.”
The students will use their photos from Angel City games to create a physical photo book and an NFT commemorating the club’s inaugural season, forming a bridge between new and traditional media. Their work will also be included in a year-end gallery exhibit, alongside other media and artifacts from the 2022 season, at the Angel City office, and the club will facilitate sales of their work at no cost.
For Alonzo Hurtado, one of the most rewarding aspects of her work is seeing women and nonbinary people lifting each other up. “We all become stronger when we look at each other and no one gets left behind,” she says. “That’s the beauty of soccer. It’s a competition, but it’s about camaraderie, not about the individual person. It's about what we accomplish as a team, as a collective.”
Header photo by Adria Marin.
