A Luminous Portrait of a South Central Neighborhood Through Medium-Format Lenses
Carlos Jaramillo spent a year trying to find the ice cream man. Back in 2020, he was staying in the South Central Los Angeles studio of painter Ozzie Juarez, using the space for interior photoshoots. But it was his long walks through the surrounding streets that ultimately captured his imagination, as Aperture reported. “It reminded me so much of where I grew up, the large immigrant communities, Latino families,” Jaramillo said. “I just felt very much like home.” Born in McAllen, Texas, Jaramillo spent a decade in New York after studying photography at the School of Visual Arts before returning to his Los Angeles roots, which were planted before he was even born.
“My parents used to live in South Central,” he explained. “We have a lot of family photos of them around 86th and Broadway. They were visiting family in Mexico when my mother was pregnant with me—they went to the closest Texas border town so I could get my American papers and ended up staying there. But having that family connection to South Central, I was naturally drawn to it.”
Following the Sculptural Inspiration of Judy Baca
The neighborhood walks became significantly more focused after Jaramillo encountered Judy Baca’s 1994 sculpture Raspados Mojados at the Museum of Latin American Art. The artwork features a functional Mexican snow cone cart—used by paleteros, or ice cream vendors—painted with images of day laborers. The term mojados in the title evokes an epithet for migrant workers. “I was really in love with the sculpture,” Jaramillo recalled. “I couldn’t get it out of my head. I really wanted to make a piece about paleteros in South Central. I spent a year trying to find someone to work with, and it wasn’t working out. Finally, I said, I’m just going to walk around, and maybe I’ll meet a paletero. Walking around, I fell in love with the place even more.”
Those meandering walks took on the quality of a dérive. Particularities of the landscape began to pulse and beckon his lens: roses growing through a chain-link fence, yellow canna lilies peeking out over a painted iron gate, girls gossiping in clusters or sitting pensively on swings, and the halo of late-afternoon sun behind a stop sign.
Challenging Visual Tropes of Urban Decline
South Central Los Angeles is frequently mythologized through a visual filter of grit, relying on orange gels and amplified grain as shorthand for urban decline. By contrast, the treatment of light in Jaramillo’s ongoing series South Central (2024–) is open-ended. The neighborhood and its residents appear not in decay, but in thoughtful repose. Subjects frequently stare directly into the lens, and on occasion, they invite him inside their homes to take pictures.
With this body of work, Jaramillo is building an interconnected portfolio where each element stands on its own without losing coherence within the whole. Rather than attempting an exhaustive definition of the place, he explores his personal relationship with it, expanding the conceptual borders of a neighborhood that is heavily depicted yet rarely seen.
Juggling Medium-Format Cameras for Intimate Documentation
Juggling a trio of medium-format cameras, Jaramillo bends the light of South Central into images celebrating a lushness of attention that has grown increasingly rare. The deep depth of field in his frame acts like a rising tide, placing every part of the picture on an even plane.
“I have a 645 that allows me to get close to flowers and details and textures. An RB67 is a clunkier camera, but it’s good for photographing people in their homes. It all depends on the situation,” he noted. “I don’t really see a separation between documentary and portraiture. I’m combining different types of photography, integrating landscape, architecture. I can get deeper and more intimate by adding all of these different approaches. It helps kind of build this narrative of the place.”
For Jaramillo, returning to the area carries a tinge of personal nostalgia, echoing his own childhood while the images continually renew themselves in relation to one another. “It feels like a lifetime project,” he said. “I could just keep shooting forever.”
