A portrait is the still life of a human being—a collaboration, a performance, a kind of psychological hack; the way it allows viewers to stare into a stranger’s eyes without apology. And when they look, they can’t help imagining what the sitter is thinking or feeling, though observed neither in real-time nor moving about in the real world. Portraits remind us that others are always looking at us, and we are all subject to someone else’s perception.
The opportunity to make these studies arose while shooting a magazine assignment about Mexican-American immigrants in East LA, where I found myself getting eyeballed by The White Fence—LA’s oldest and most violent gang, dating to 1900—its history as unforgiving as the streets they rule. But what struck me wasn’t menace; it was their pride—and style: theatrical, self-curated, and precise, a visual assertion of identity and status. I proposed portraits, not on the street, but in my studio, a neutral zone miles away from their turf, closer to Beverly Hills than Boyle Heights.
They agreed—reluctantly. Curiosity won out. In exchange for gas money and beer, they endured the strange ritual of posing in front of an “old-timey” camera and a big bright boxlight. It wasn’t trust, exactly, but it was participation. The big 4x5, always on a tripod, slowed things down, demanded deliberation—on both sides of the lens. They let me see them—on their terms and mine.
An impulse to create art helps define humanity. Seeing humans as the subjects of art comes full circle with portraiture. A portrait is made, not taken. When photons bounce off living beings and pass through the aperture of a glass lens, propelled by an occult force called “the mind’s eye” to converge on a light-sensitive substrate inside a dark box, two parties on either side of this contraption—the camera—are committed to telling a short story for one endlessly enduring moment. I aim to preserve what happens when people allow themselves to be seen. That’s the magic I chase.
