Los Angeles River
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Go Back to Los Angeles Home ~ Go Back to Boyle Heights ~ Jump Ahead to Downtown LA
In all of my travels and considering all of my walks through places considered way more dangerous than Los Angeles, it was here that I was the most afraid for my life I have ever been…
“As seen on TV” I thought I was imagining this at first. A car driving on the riverbed? I waited until it passed under the bridge so that I could capture the headlights. I felt like I was on a set of some crime thriller. Little did I know…
Shot with a 210 mm lens.
It was dusk and I was distracted…
I had spent the afternoon photographing the area around the LA River and made the decision to also photograph the historic Olvera Street in the twilight. My car was parked in Boyle Heights and I just didn’t think about the logistics of walking back to my car in this area at night.
I had several frames left on my roll of 35mm Ilford Delta 3200 film. It is expensive film. I didn’t want to waste it so I was looking for interesting things to photograph. The problem was that I didn’t have a tripod and it was too dark to shoot with this sensitive film. I needed to find a substitute in order to take a picture.
It’s something I do a lot. Tripods are big and bulky and they attract a lot of attention. So when I need one, I use whatever I can find to stabilize my camera on location. It means I don’t always get the composition I want but I get a photo that I would never have gotten if I carried more equipment with me.
On my way back to my car, my friend Fabian called me. As we chatted, I stopped along the bridge over the LA River to photograph the train tracks at night. (See the photo below) It would be the last photo I would take that night.
“Tracks in the Night.” Long Exposure without a tripod. 35mm Ilford Delta 3200 film. December 2007
“Hey! What are you doing?”
I was on the phone with one of my best friends.
Not paying attention to my surroundings.
Distracted.
Alone.
That voice I had just heard, wasn’t coming from my phone.
I didn’t see the guy coming toward me. He was agitated. Nervous. On drugs.
He was standing between me and my car - which was still over a half-mile away. It was no good to me now. I had to confront this junkie who was all up in my business and I had no way of knowing if he was armed and if his intention was to hurt me or worse.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m taking pictures.”
“Take a picture of me!”
Here I was, standing inches from this guy who was high on drugs. He saw my camera. He asked me what I was doing. I tried to explain my project to him as a way of disarming him.
“Fabian. Don’t hang up. You might have to call the police.” My friend listened as I turned my attention back to this guy who barely spoke English. I switched to Spanish.
I knew that if I lifted my camera to my face to frame a shot, it would block my peripheral vision and I would not see the knife or the gun or the punch coming if in fact there was one about to greet me.
All I could do was try to convince this guy that I could not take his picture, even though he had just seen me take a photo.
“No puedo. No hay luz. No tengo Flash.”
(I can’t. There’s no light. I don’t have a flash.)
This man was 3 inches from my face demanding I take his photo. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Sometimes I wish I had.
I replay that night often, wondering what that photo would have looked like.
Blurry. For certain it would have been blurry. Blurry isn’t always bad.
But you only get one chance not to make a mistake if you want to stay alive.
The man, frustrated with my lack of cooperation, took two steps back, rolled up his sleeves and showed me his arms.
“¡TOMA MI FOTO!” (Take my picture!)
I looked at his arms as he thrust them forward. One had a near full sleeve tattoo made up of dozens of tattoos. They covered scars that had built up over years of a very painful life self-inflicting the psychological damage he obviously had suffered for God-knows how long.
His other arm was full of tracks - needle tracks. I could read a history of drug use and self-medicating oblivion in front of me.
Now I could see the story the photo he wanted me to take would tell.
But I wanted to live to tell the story, not die with one less frame on my roll.
“¡NO PUEDO!”(I can’t!)
There was this moment between us in which I felt the entirety of time come to a halt as we looked into each other’s eyes.
“OK… No me sigas!” (OK… Don’t follow me.)
And just like that, he ran off into the darkness.
“I think I should go home now” I said to my friend. “Keep talking to me while I walk to the car just in case I run into more trouble.
The photo I never took
still plays in my head to this day.
