I Try walking around with some cameras. On the day I took this photo, he had two Nikon film cameras with me, one in black and white and one in color. I had an errand to go to Sunset Boulevard. I went to a repair shop to have my boots resoled, then headed to Amoeba Music. However, the store opened at 10:30am. Suddenly people started walking past me. I thought, “What the hell is going on?” I heard screams and the words “someone is shooting.”
As I turned the corner, I saw the gunman and heard bullets ricocheting. “Bing, bang, bin.” I ducked under a row of newspaper delivery machines. Craig MarquezA plainclothes Los Angeles police officer I recognized stopped his car with his partner and started running down the street. I followed them and took pictures. When they reached the gunman, Tyler Brehm, he was holding a knife in his left hand. he shouted. “I want to die.” And I see him reach for a gun. Marquez shot him and he fell to the ground. It was very surreal.
I developed the photo in the same afternoon. LA Times And the next morning, one of them was on the front page. People say, “You’re taking advantage of the victim,” and I thought, “You’re taking advantage of the victim.” “Wait a minute.” I’m taking a photo. People deliberately go to war zones in the hope of taking such photos. The whole thing lasted less than five minutes, but then I had a nightmare where I was in the middle of gunfire. 12 years later, I still have nightmares.
It turned out that Brehm was addicted to prescription drugs and that his relationship with his girlfriend had ended. In the end, it was “suicide by cop.” he killed someone And they were firing indiscriminately. People with mental health issues shouldn’t have access to guns, but how do we control that when there are 350 million people in the population? We have a Second Amendment and are an armed nation. I grew up in Boyle Heights in East LA in the 1990s, and it was brutal. I think my experience of having seen a drive-by shooting before helped me calm down and take the photo. I knew I was out of range.
Boyle Heights is considered L.A.’s first Chicano neighborhood and has the highest concentration of Latinos in the nation (94%). I took a film class at LA City College. Boyle Heights was different from the standard view of Los Angeles, so I knew I should start taking pictures. There was a contest at the gallery. one fickle second, a photo of a girl at a party won an award. That’s what I thought at that time. “Shit, maybe I’m good at this.”
That photo was part of my project eastsiders. The photos were taken spontaneously and are not styled or set. I think that’s what makes them special. I could have just been drinking beer in someone’s backyard. Author Gay Talese called his form of journalism “the art of hanging out.” That’s what my photos look like. It looks cool and I like it. That’s probably what people like about it.
Once upon a time, photographers captured it all. Now everyone is specializing. I’ve worked with his wheel company Miramax, LA Weekly, fashion houses, and music labels. I like that I’ve done a lot of different things. Sometimes you can’t be very selective. That’s what I say to young photographers: you have to work, you have to buckle down and pay the bills. Not all work is “the art of photography”. Some photographers think they’re really special. They act like assholes and I think, “How dare I take a picture!” I never want to be like that.
Gregory Bojorquez’s resume
to be born: Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, 1972.
Trained: “I took a photography class in high school and then taught myself through books and an assistant photographer.”
Impact: “Diane Arbus, Martin Scorsese, Bruce Davidson, Larry Clark, David Lynch, John Cassavetes, Richard Avedon, Phil Stern, William Eggleston.”
High points: “When everything was new. I had a lot of friends who were trying to do different things, who had a lot of enthusiasm and drive.”
Bottom point: “When things really slowed down and you weren’t sure if you could make it through photography alone. Leonard Cohen once said he went through the same thing, and only an artist can know that feeling. “That’s terrible.”
Top tip: “Stay enthusiastic. It’s tough when your art or craft becomes a means of supporting yourself, but you have to keep that enthusiasm going no matter what.”
