Carlos Jaramillo Documents South Central Los Angeles in New Series

Carlos Jaramillo spent a year in 2020 searching for an ice cream vendor in South Central Los Angeles. He was staying in the studio of painter Ozzie Juarez, using the space for interior photo shoots, but his long walks through the surrounding blocks revealed a landscape that mirrored his childhood in Texas amid large immigrant communities and Latino families.

The piece features a functional Mexican snow cone cart painted with images of day laborers, evoking the derogatory term for migrant workers. The sculpture left an impression that pushed Jaramillo to seek out local paleteros, turning a lingering artistic ambition into a sustained documentary project.

Walking as a Method of Discovery

Finding subjects did not happen overnight. After a year of dead ends trying to collaborate with vendors, Jaramillo simply walked the streets.

“I couldn’t get it out of my head,” Jaramillo said of Baca’s work, according to Aperture. “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 dérive-like walks opened his eyes to quiet neighborhood details: roses pushing through chain-link fences, yellow canna lilies rising behind iron gates, and teenagers talking on swings under the late-afternoon sun. While South Central is frequently reduced to a visual shorthand of grit, orange filters, and heavy grain, Jaramillo’s lens treats the area with open-ended illumination. Residents stare directly into the camera or invite him inside their homes, subverting the traditional distance of street photography.

A Family Thread Across Decades

Jaramillo’s connection to South Central runs deeper than artistic curiosity. Born in McAllen, Texas, and shaped by a decade in New York after studying at the School of Visual Arts, he carries family roots planted in Los Angeles long before his birth.

His parents once lived near 86th and Broadway. While visiting family in Mexico during his mother’s pregnancy, they traveled to the nearest Texas border town so he could secure his American papers, ultimately staying there. That familial history drew him back to the grid of South Central, bridging personal nostalgia with contemporary documentation.

Carlos Jaramillo Documents South Central Los Angeles in New Series

Technical Rigor and the Ongoing Series

With his ongoing series South Central, launched in 2024, Jaramillo relies on a trio of medium-format cameras to build a cohesive narrative. He juggles equipment based on the physical demands of the scene:

A 645 camera for getting close to floral textures and architectural details.
A clunkier RB67 camera suited for intimate portraits inside private homes.
Integrated approaches combining landscape, architecture, and portraiture on an even plane.

“I don’t really see a separation between documentary and portraiture,” Jaramillo explained to Aperture. “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.”

Rather than attempting a definitive sociological study of South Central, Jaramillo maps his own relationship to the terrain. The work continues to evolve, grounded in a lushness of attention that treats every element of the frame with equal weight. As Jaramillo noted, the project feels vast enough to last a lifetime.

Worth a look