When I’m holding a camera, I’m an outsider looking in—observing moments as they unfold in real time. As a photographer, I always question the role that visuals have in journalism and how I can push the boundaries of visual storytelling.
My journey toward figuring this out accelerated a year ago when I packed up my life in Long Beach to live and work in San Francisco. As part of a fellowship with Report for America and CatchLight Local, I became El Tecolote’s full-time photojournalist, documenting Latinx life in one of the most multicultural cities in the world.
Latinx Life in San Francisco
My first impression of the Mission District, where El Tecolote’s newsroom is located, was that it felt like home. Right outside our doors, Latinx communities come together for events like Día de los Muertos, Carnaval, and lowrider shows. They gather inside our doors, too, for art walks, gallery openings, and tiny music concerts featuring local Latinx artists and vendors. I don’t know any other newsroom that merges art and media together, particularly in the service of a bilingual, working-class community of color.
Latinx people are being pushed out of their historic district in the Mission, yet the neighborhood owes its vibrant artistic and cultural legacy to the ideas and contributions of the thousands of Latin American immigrants who made it their home over the past several decades.
Today, even though Hispanic people make up only about 12% of San Francisco residents, Latinx people still have a strong foothold in the Mission and are also concentrated in tight-knit communities in other neighborhoods like the Excelsior, the Bayview, and the Tenderloin. Even if they don’t live in the city, thousands of Latinx people undergo long commutes from the East Bay to work in San Francisco’s restaurants, construction sites, gig-work and other service-sector economies.
As a bilingual photojournalist with Chilean roots, the community I cover for El Tecolote feels like my own, a personal tie that deeply informs the way I approach visual documentation in San Francisco.
Community-Centered Approach to Photojournalism
Working in a community, bilingual newsroom, my approach differs from that of traditional photojournalists. Instead of upholding pretensions of distance and objectivity—which can often produce harmful imagery of marginalized groups—at El Tecolote, we pursue the truth with both rigor and empathy. This practice requires us to work hand-in-hand with the people and communities we cover. It’s part of the history here.
Despite the distance created by my camera while I’m taking photos, most of my job involves getting to know people, building trust, and ensuring they feel fairly and accurately represented by my photographs. Trust is both scarce and easily destroyed, especially when working with vulnerable and marginalized communities.
This year, I’ve balanced daily, quick-turn news with long-term, intimate visual documentaries. This approach has been critical to El Tecolote’s coverage of RV communities and permitted street vendors, two uniquely Latinx communities unfairly targeted by the city’s gentrifying development projects and efforts to combat public safety concerns.
To counteract mainstream narratives that malign these communities, I document a different, people-first perspective. Along with the El Teco team, we track personal stories of hardship, emphasizing the tight-knit nature of these families and workers. I also check in and visit often because it’s crucial to engage with and listen to people outside of the headlines and photographs we publish.
Pushing the Boundaries of Visual Storytelling
Photography is not only my profession. It’s also a core part of my art practice. It’s important for me to approach photo-making creatively, both on and off the job.
One of the photographic processes I enjoy most is working with analog film, a medium that takes me into community darkrooms across the city, including Photo Laundry in the Mission, run by Bobo Li.
In a fast-paced, digital-first world of algorithms and short attention spans, the old-school photographic tradition of analog film—often processed and scanned in my apartment kitchen and bathroom—is a meditation of labor. Analog work slows me down, keeping me grounded to the connections I’ve made in the community.
My most recent analog film work was during Carnaval, a two-day festival in the Mission celebrating Latinx and Caribbean cultures. With my 6×6 Mamiya camera and expired film, I immersed myself in the dance performances and artistic displays on the street, capturing moments of joy among Indigenous, Afro-Latinx, and other communities of color.
Because San Francisco’s Latinx communities face ongoing threats of violence and displacement, I am continually pushed to the forefront of people’s pain and trauma. It’s important for me to also document the joy and resilience that is core to Latinx life and identity. Using film and alternative processes allows me to create space for art that can sometimes speak more than traditional forms of photojournalism.
With my camera, my job is to capture the beauty in fleeting moments—from the highs of Carnaval and lows of police violence, to the seemingly mundane parts of daily life. Embracing photographic practices rooted in empathy and experimentation has allowed me to develop a visual language that is both intimate and artistic, upholding the dignity of the people I photograph. These are the images I am most proud of.
