Las Fotos Project

Last updated

Las Fotos Project is a nonprofit organization in East Los Angeles, California that mentors teenage girls and gender-expansive youth from local communities of color in using photography. The organization supports self-expression, leadership skills and social well-being. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Contents

Las Fotos Project is a 501(c)(3) organization that was founded in 2010 by Eric Ibarra. [6] [7] Ibarra left in 2020, whereupon it become 100% women of color-led, with Lucía Torres becoming executive director. [8] The project was based in Lincoln Heights and in 2019 it moved to Boyle Heights. [6]

Three courses are offered: on self-exploration, using introspective photography and self-portraiture; on photojournalism by documenting social issues in the community; and on creative entrepreneurial skills for a career, connecting students with paid photography jobs. Classes are taught in the evening and on weekends during 12-week spring and fall semesters. [6]

Publications

Related Research Articles

Photojournalism Using images to tell a news story

Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography by having a rigid ethical framework which demands an honest but impartial approach that tells a story in strictly journalistic terms. Photojournalists contribute to the news media, and help communities connect with one other. They must be well-informed and knowledgeable, and are able to deliver news in a creative manner that is both informative and entertaining.

Catherine Opie American fine-art photographer (born 1961)

Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine-art photographer and educator. She lives and works in West Adams, Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at University of California at Los Angeles.

Matthew Rolston

Matthew Russell Rolston is an American artist, photographer, director and creative director. He is known for his signature lighting techniques and detailed approach to art direction and design and has been repeatedly identified throughout his career with the revival and modern expression of Hollywood glamour.

Graciela Iturbide Mexican photographer (born 1942)

Graciela Iturbide is a Mexican photographer. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is included in many major museum collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Ruth Orkin was an American photographer, photojournalist, and filmmaker, with ties to New York City and Hollywood. Best known for her photograph An American Girl in Italy (1951), she photographed many celebrities and personalities including Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Ava Gardner, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Renée C. Byer is the senior photojournalist at The Sacramento Bee, where she has worked since 2003.

Laura Aguilar was an American photographer. She was born with auditory dyslexia and attributed her start in photography to her brother, who showed her how to develop in dark rooms. She was mostly self-taught, although she took some photography courses at East Los Angeles College, where her second solo exhibition, Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell, was held. She was well-known for her portraits, mostly of herself, and also focused upon people in marginalized communities, including LGBT and Latino subjects, self-love, and social stigma of obesity.

Robert Yager British freelance photographer

Robert Yager is a British born freelance photographer based in Los Angeles. Studying photography in the US, Yager decided to start documenting Los Angeles street gangs in 1991. From there, Yager has been a contributing photographer to a host of magazines.

Erin Grace Trieb is an American photojournalist. Trieb focuses on international social issues and is currently based in Istanbul, Turkey.

Laia Abril is a Catalan artist whose work relates to bio-politics, grief and women rights.

Siri Kaur

Siri Kaur is an artist/photographer who lives and works in Los Angeles, where she also serves as associate professor at Otis College of Art and Design. She received an MFA in photography from California Institute of the Arts in 2007, an MA in Italian studies in 2001 from Smith College/Universita’ di Firenze, Florence, Italy, and BA in comparative literature from Smith College in 1998. Kaur was the recipient of the Portland Museum of Art Biennial Purchase Prize in 2011. She regularly exhibits and has had solo shows at Blythe Projects and USC's 3001 galleries in Los Angeles, and group shows at the Torrance Museum of Art, California Institute of Technology, and UCLA’s Wight Biennial. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, art ltd., The L.A. Times, and The Washington Post, and is housed in the permanent collections of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the University of Maine.

Barbara Davidson

Barbara Davidson is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy award winning photojournalist. She is currently a Guggenheim Fellow, 2019-2020, and is travelling the country in her car, with her two dogs, making 8x10 portraits of gun-shot survivors using an 8x10 film camera.

Marilyn Stafford is an American-born British photographer. She worked mainly as a freelance photojournalist based in Paris in the 1950s and early 1960s, then in London, travelling to Lebanon, Tunisia, India and elsewhere. Her work was published in The Observer and other newspapers. Stafford also worked as a fashion photographer in Paris, where she photographed models in the streets in everyday situations, rather than in the more usual opulent surroundings.

Solmaz Daryani Iranian photojournalist and documentary photographer

Solmaz Daryani is an Iranian photographer and visual artist based in the UK and Iran. Her work is particularly known for exploring the themes of climate security, climate change, water crisis, the human identity and environment in the Middle East. Daryani is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo.

Gulshan Khan South African photographer

Gulshan Khan is an independent South African photographer based in Johannesburg. Noted for her photojournalism work focused on social justice identity and human rights development, Khan's work engages in multi-layered themes around the mediatized representations of identities in South Africa which inform her visual practice.

Guadalupe Rosales is an American artist and educator. She is best known for her archival projects, “Veteranas and Rucas” and “Map Pointz,” found on social media. The archives focus on Latino backyard party scenes and underground subcultures in Los Angeles in the late-twentieth century and early-twenty first.

Rafael Cardenas is a Mexican-American photographer based in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights.

Mohamed Altoum is a Sudanese freelance documentary photographer. He is one of the founding members of the 'Sudanese Photographers Group' and became known for his photographic storytelling about migrants of the Sudanese diaspora living in Nairobi, Kenya. Another of his photo stories is called Hoshmmar, where he traced the life of his late father through Kenya, Sudan and Egypt to explore his heritage, originating from the culture of Nubians in northern Sudan.

Poulomi Basu is an Indian artist, documentary photographer and activist, much of whose work addresses the normalisation of violence against marginalised women.

Salih Basheer Sudanese photographer

Salih Basheer is a Sudanese documentary photographer, living in exile. During his studies of Geography at Cairo University, Egypt, he started as a self-taught photographer and subsequently studied documentary photography in Denmark.

References

  1. Guerra, Roberto (25 March 2021). "L.A. girls behind the lens". High Country News . Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  2. "Las Fotos Project honors up-and-coming women photographers". Los Angeles Times. 22 October 2021. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
  3. "People Making A Difference: Las Fotos Project Inspires Teen Girls Through Photography". losangeles.cbslocal.com. 27 May 2021. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
  4. "Through photojournalism, young women document injustices and reasons for hope in L.A." USC News. 6 November 2020. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  5. "Las Fotos Project zooms in on mental health". Southern California Public Radio. 13 January 2017. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  6. 1 2 3 Mendez, Stephanie (4 September 2019). "Las Fotos Project gives girls a mission: Grab a camera and shoot your world". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2022-03-10.
  7. Dominguez, Jessica (13 August 2019). "Young photographer's project a thank you to East LA". ABC7 Los Angeles. Retrieved 2022-03-11.
  8. Medina, Alex (17 July 2020). "Las Fotos Project becomes 100% women of color-led". boyleheightsbeat.com. Retrieved 2022-03-11.