How to Photograph Someone You Know

East Los Angeles is the kind of place that gets described by people who’ve never been there—shorthand for social dysfunction, gang violence, the friction of too many cultures packed too tightly together. Gregory Bojorquez grew up inside that shorthand and started pointing a camera at his neighbors before he had any reason to think anyone would care. The LA Weekly eventually did, publishing his mostly black-and-white work and bringing him to an audience that could see what he was actually doing: not documenting pathology, but making portraits. There’s a difference, and it matters.

His subjects are American youth—found at East LA backyards, quinceañeras, house parties, front stoops at dusk—but also hip-hop artists, celebrities, whoever crosses his path and agrees to let him get close. The closeness is the whole thing. His photographs have the intimacy of someone who’s known you for years, not someone parachuting in for a story about the neighborhood.

His website, mugshotphotography.com, used to serve a fresh piece of life advice on every reload. One tip at a time, cycling through whenever you visited. I appreciated the gesture—the idea that the same person who could freeze a face like that also wanted to tell you something useful about being alive.