Biography

My parents were heavily involved in the Chicano/Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s. My upbringing was defined by radical ideology, cultural pride, and a lot of partying.

I grew up with the knowledge that somehow I needed to promote social justice in whatever career I would have. At the same time, I enjoyed academics, my culture, and many of the adventures Los Angeles had to offer.

I graduated from Eagle Rock High School in 1990. During my early high school years my mother gave me my first camera. The camera quickly became for me a way of creating imagery that documented my development as a young Chicano. I had fun with photography, but I feared that art would probably never pay the bills.

My college and graduate school years found me focused on politics and public service. I received my Bachelor’s of Arts in American History from San Francisco State University in 1996. And in 1998, I received my Master’s in Public Policy (Criminal Justice Emphasis) from Claremont Graduate University. Currently, I am enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts Program at California State University, Long Beach.

With my Master’s in public policy, I worked in several government environments including administrative departments, political offices and now within the court system. As I became a full-time ‘bureaucrat’ and witnessed the machinations of "justice," I started to use my camera again and make imagery that explores humanity and its struggle with the institutions that govern our lives.

Artist Statment

Working in a downtown courthouse I encounter low-income people at the mercy of system-driven attorneys; unattended brown and black babies crawling on marble floors; prowling sheriff deputies flirting with teenage girls; and many other scenes that are simultaneously nightmarish and real.

The various energies that define my place of employment inspire me to explore how this bureaucratic institution impacts our lives. Being a part of the bureaucracy myself, the photographs I make investigates my own relationship to this power structure.

Because the use of cameras is prohibited in the public spaces of the court, I create installations and/or pose people as litigants, attorneys, and other characters after hours in order to re-enact the physical/emotional landscape that I experience during normal working hours.

Recently, I have been creating non-traditional judicial portraiture by posing real bench officers from the Los Angeles Superior Court in spaces of the courthouse that would otherwise never be used for judicial portraits.  The reason for this work is to explore the imperfection of human presence in the administration of idealistic notions such as “justice.”

My images seek to reveal the impressions made by institutions on our individual and shared humanity. By creating imagery of the impact of institutional presence on to our ‘being,’ I want to raise consciousness of the vulnerability we all still have to the man-made forces that exist outside of ourselves.