OF TWO WORLDs: Portraits of Immigrants in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a city unlike any other. It is an expansive mosaic of cultures, languages, and traditions. Nearly nine million people call the City of Angels home, each culture adding its own rhythm, flavor, and sensibility to the vibrant whole. Growing up and living here has been a gift. On any given day, I am surrounded by faces and voices that reflect the corners of the globe. This diversity is not abstract to me; it has shaped my daily life, my friendships, and my creative practice.

In creating this series, I wanted to make portraits that honored the richness of Los Angeles while remaining deeply personal. I turned to the immigrants who are already a part of my life: neighbors, students, friends, small business owners, and others I connect with regularly. Each has enriched my life in ways large and small, and together they form a quiet testimony to the power of presence and relationship.

The portraits are staged with a deliberate nod to 18th-century heroic painting. This was a way of countering the common Ellis Island imagery that often defines how we imagine “the immigrant.” Instead, I wanted to elevate each subject, to recognize their dignity and strength. For the sittings, I asked each person to hold or wear something they carried with them on their journey to the United States. These objects, whether a scarf from Nigeria, a machete for night fishing in the Philippines, or even a beloved child conceived on other shores are tangible connections to places once called home. They serve as bridges between past and present, memory and possibility.

Through this project, I was given the profound privilege of listening. I came to better understand the realities of the immigrant experience, from DACA applications to Green Card struggles, from the hurdles endured to the quiet resilience sustained. Again and again, I witnessed the complexity of living in two worlds—one foot firmly rooted in the culture that shapes identity, the other planted in a country built on the promise of hope.

In a time when immigration has been politicized, weaponized, and reduced to statistics, these portraits insist on humanity. They ask us to see each other, not as issues or headlines, but as people whose sacrifices and dreams continue to shape the fabric of this nation. To recognize the immigrant story is to recognize America itself: its past, its present, and its uncertain future.