Commentary: Introducing "The Southland As I've Seen It"
Some reflections from the journalist behind Inadvertent. "The Southland As I've Seen It" is a curated gallery of photographs created in the Southland over the past few years.
Publisher’s note: “The Southland As I’ve Seen It” is a curated gallery of photographs taken in the Southland over the past few years. It is available to view here.
I have always been a writer since grade school, but I was a photographer before I was a journalist. Learning how to use a camera began in 2013 in my Brandt Hall dorm room at the University of La Verne. A friend who was already a photographer had reached out about starting a music review blog because he heard that I was studying journalism at college and needed a writer. I was eighteen and absolutely stoked to start on this project. Within a year, we grew to a handful of people on the team and were able to get access to most local venues and festivals to write and photograph. The site is archived but I’ll let you all try to find that on your own because, as other creatives can likely relate, seeing your early work can make you cringe.
Regardless, we did the damn thing and through that I became a capable photographer. Soon enough, I had an appendage to document time with friends and family. I was mostly unaware of the world around me still and my photographs reflected that. Though the Ferguson Uprising was showing up on my Twitter feed, I was not thinking critically about what it meant.
I remember the day that Donald Trump, in the same grandiose and narcissistic fashion he does today, came down the Trump tower escalator and told the world he was running for president. He said, “…and we are going to make our country great again.”
It was June 16, 2015. Soon after that, I learned that it wasn’t just fashion — it was fascism.
