I spent Saturday evening on the LA photo Walkabout organized by Perfect Exposure Gallery owner Armando Arorizo and LA Times photog maestro Luis Sinco.
Here are some of the shots.
Armando and Luis are planning another one for this Saturday. It’s a great time, walking about LA, seeing it in a different way, learning more about photography from two consummate pros.
For more info, contact the gallery, in Koreatown, at 213-381-1137 or 1138 or at www.theperfectexposuregallery.com.
Filed under Photography
The Perfect Exposure Studio in Koreatown, connected to the gallery of the same name, which has had some wondrous photo exhibits, is holding a Photo Walkabout with LA Times photog Luis Sinco and gallery owner, Armando Arorizo.
Walking around L.A., over a two-mile distance, shooting street scenes of whatever presents itself. Sounds like a ton of fun.
The thing takes place Saturday, June 30. There’s an 8 a.m.-noon session and another from 6pm to 10pm. $175 per person if you buy tix in advance.
Filed under Photography
The next few days have a couple very hip events taking place west of downtown that you don’t want to miss.
On Thursday, The Perfect Exposure Gallery holds an opening of photographs by Michael Cannon, centering around the 3rd and Vermont area. That ‘s one packed section of town, and one of my favorites, with folks from Korea, Bangladesh, Oaxaca, Salvador, and probably elsewhere as well.
It was there that I grew to love the strip mall — the immigrant’s blackboard. But that’s for another blog post.
Cannon, one of whose photos is above, has been living in and shooting the area for 15 years and his images will be on display at the gallery beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday.
By the way, The Perfect Exposure (3519 W. 6th St.) is fantastic photo gallery, exhibiting some of the best photographers from Los Angeles and elsewhere. Really worth a visit.
Then on Sunday, the 2013 Oaxacan basketball season gets underway, with a tournament at Toberman Park. The 
inauguration, which is as cool to behold as the games, begins at noon.
Oaxacan basketball tournaments usually involve 20+ teams and bring together folks from all over Southern California.
(I wrote about them in my first book, True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx — which you should also not miss.)
They used to be held at Normandie Park, a few blocks away. Normandie Park is in fact a bi-nationally famous little park due to the role it played in maintaining the Oaxacan community, mostly folks from the Sierra Juarez mountains, for many years beginning in the 1970s by hosting hundreds, probably thousands, of tournament games by now.
But tournament size and disputes with park management meant that organizers switched the events to Toberman.
Either way, a fun way to see another part of LA on a Sunday.
Filed under California, Culture, Los Angeles, Migrants, Photography, Streets, Uncategorized
Yesterday I spent some time with Salvadoran immigrants as they inaugurated the corner of Pico and Vermont as Monsenor Oscar Romero Square.
An interesting exertion of the ethnic presence in an area where Latinos are the majority population, but the economic power is largely Korean.
These kinds of (I’ll call them) tensions make I think for interesting stories. The square and a hoped-for El Salvadoran Corridor down Vermont was presented to me as a way of having Salvadorans recognized, but also saying to Koreans that Salvadorans are here and to be taken into account.
Salvadorans were stung two years ago when Korean-American leaders tried to expand the official boundaries of Koreatown to include (largely Latino) Pico-Union without consulting them.
It’s unclear how forceful a square or corridor will be — but the precedent of Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Tokyo, Little Armenia, etc. is there. So Salvadorans feel they have something coming, too.
The other interesting point to come out of it, seems to me, is that the Salvadorans pushing this are, for the first time, business owners and Salvadoran-Americans, and mostly younger.
The Salvadoran community took shape in the 1980s amid lots of attention to its civil war. Nonprofits formed here to attend to the needs of the new refugees. The folks who ran these nonprofits became the public face of the Salvadoran community and have been there ever since. The business community was small and disorganized and the political class was nonexistent. (Salvadorans still have elected no one to public office in LA County.) Yet these nonprofit leaders, apparently, often clashed with each other over; occasionally the dividing lines were the same as those during the civil war. Most folks I spoke with count this as a reason why Salvadoran economic and political power has lagged here in L.A.
But that now seems to be changing, as a new generation steps forward, and seems to leave behind the divisions created by the country’s civil war (1980-92). Be interesting to watch how it unfolds.
Filed under Los Angeles, Migrants
