Monterey Park

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Go Back to Los Angeles Home ~ Jump Ahead to East LA

I have a
confession…

I didn’t walk across LA in the geographical order that I am presenting this work. Much like a film is shot out of sequence, I photographed Monterey Park - the beginning of our journey across this great global city - on the last day of photography.
It was a bright, Saturday in late Spring that I set out to finish what I had begun more than 6 months earlier.
I came to Monterey Park with the memory of the hundreds and hundreds of images that I had taken previously. Knowing that, it is doubtful that I would have photographed this part of the journey in the same way as I would have had i started the journey from here.
Our past steps inform how we take the steps in front of us. The roughly 150,000 steps that I took to make this journey possible have shaped everything about who I am as an artist and as a person.

In the final few miles of this journey, I was confronted by the reality that the end had come full circle to its beginning. You see, I started in downtown LA on a foggy Thanksgiving morning, in the cradle of this region that was conquered by Spain, converted to Catholicism, liberated by Mexican independence and later became part of the United States in a war to expand our borders from coast to coast. On Thanksgiving, a day that itself has tremendous symbolism with regards to European expansion and what that meant for the First Nations of the Americas, I was photographing the original Spanish settlement of the Pueblo de Los Angeles. On this final day, I photographed images such as this one, which tell the story of Chicano identity - Indigenous-Mexican-American identity - that is at the core of LA culture. In the center of this mural, we see a portrait of Cesar Chavez, for whom a big part of the street I walked along for this project was renamed. — In the final few miles of this journey, I was confronted by the reality that the end had come full circle to its beginning. You see, I started in downtown LA on a foggy Thanksgiving morning, in the cradle of this region that was conquered by Spain, converted to Catholicism, liberated by Mexican independence and later became part of the United States in a war to expand our borders from coast to coast.
On Thanksgiving, a day that itself has tremendous symbolism with regards to European expansion and what that meant for the First Nations of the Americas, I was photographing the original Spanish settlement of the Pueblo de Los Angeles. On this final day, I photographed images such as this one, which tell the story of Chicano identity - Indigenous-Mexican-American identity - that is at the core of LA culture. In the center of this mural, we see a portrait of Cesar Chavez, for whom a big part of the street I walked along for this project was renamed.

Schools built in the 1950’s and 60’s as Los Angeles expanded outward in the Postwar boom, tell another part of this story of identity and culture. It is through the public school system where children of immigrants and the great-grandchildren of former immigrants and the great-great grandchildren of former slaves and the children of the descendants of those who walked here from Asia, all come together to learn and grow into and out of their shared community.

It is in these public schools that a modern national identity is also reinforced. Daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance would be heard if you timed your walk past these schools to coincide with this morning ritual. This pledge, recited at ev… — It is in these public schools that a modern national identity is also reinforced. Daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance would be heard if you timed your walk past these schools to coincide with this morning ritual. This pledge, recited at every public school in the country, along with the imagery of the US flag that comes with that pledge, connects the children and staff within, be they rich, poor, brown, black or white, to this shared American identity. This ritual connects the children on this end of Avenida Cesar Chavez, to the other end of Sunset Boulevard, to the other coast of the country, in their shared, yet diverse American identity and culture.

School of Hard Walks…

This stretch of Avenida Cesar Chavez passes by an elementary school on one side and East Los Angeles College on the other. The college campus is open and enormous while the elementary school feels more fortified behind its iron bars.

I understand the bars - they are there to keep strangers out and make sure the kids stay in. I get it, it’s a safety thing. But I could not help but be reminded of just how imposing those bars are when you are the child on the other side of them.

I was a product of California public schools and I remember that feeling of my schools being a great opportunity to explore and learn while at the same time that mid-century institutional architecture is not exactly inspiring one to become the next Einstein.

California has the largest public university system in the US and one of the best in the world. It also has the largest prison system in the country and one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.

You cannot walk the walk that I walked without being confronted by elements of that dichotomy of opportunities won and lost, and the ability to have and have not.

This educational foundation on display in Monterey Park is key to the California dream being an avenue for many to become super stars in their own way. Billions are spent on this community priority. East LA College was undergoing major redevelopment when I passed it and one cannot underestimate the importance of this investment in the community.

It takes a village to bring all of us into adulthood. The village we are born into plays a huge role in the village we will likely live out our days.

This is a photographic journey through those many villages that collectively form a cross section of not just Los Angeles, but the world in all its diversity, all living along this one stretch of pavement.