By Blessing Okorougo, Head of Social Impact & Sustainability at Youth To The People
Las Fotos Project is a community organization with a strong belief in art’s power to transform the individual and society.
YTTP & Las Fotos Project Community Portrait Day
During this year’s Latin X Heritage Month, Youth To The People will be collaborating with LFP to host a Community Portrait Day event. Community members are invited to get their portraits done for free and can donate to a mutual aid fundraiser set up by LFP to support local families experiencing economic hardship.
Q&A Conversation with Las Fotos Project
We are excited to catch up with Co-Executive Director Helen Alonzo Hurtado at LFP. Here she shares what is behind the motivation to establish Las Fotos Project, gender empowerment and preserving community during challenging times.
Tell us about how LFP came to be?
A bit by chance. Founder, Eric Ibarra, who is also a photographer, was extremely interested in participatory photography. It’s a photography method that is community focused and offers training for historically underserved groups to help them document their own realities and perspectives. Eric volunteered at an organization to learn more about this approach and led a photo workshop. During his workshop, 10 middle school students signed up but only seven students showed up and they were all girls. A few sessions into his workshop the remaining students showed up. All boys. And Eric realized that the entire energy of this workshop program had shifted dramatically when the boys joined the sessions. After the workshop ended, Eric approached some of the girls to understand why their dynamic had changed. What Eric learned was how safe the girls felt in an all-inclusive environment and how they felt more able to express their voice. From this, Eric realized he needed to create a space just for young women. He wanted them to be able to come together to express themselves more freely and use art, photography, and their voices to be heard.
LFP was not intentional in its founding per se but the differences that Eric witnessed firsthand among the young girls when leading these workshops resonated with him. And he wanted to create something that would resonate with young women in the community. And with misogyny, the taking away of rights for women, anti-queer rhetoric... LFP has both created community but also found a way to resist. We have created spaces that ensure that our communities of color are not making themselves small.
And what type of programs does LFP offer and why?
In our trajectory and how our org grew, we started by creating classes focused on identity through mixed media techniques. These are about exploring ourselves – who are we? From there we created a second class a few years later that focused on photojournalism through advocacy. Essentially, what does it mean to acknowledge our communities and how do we advocate for our communities? Then finally, we created a creative entrepreneur opportunities course, which has now grown into a creative career pathways program. It’s allowed for our students to see themselves with a future in art should they want to pursue that direction.
For LFP it’s been a tiered approach – First, it is knowing ourselves, second, it is knowing our communities and third, it is how and where do we put into practice. The culmination is ideally a real sense of agency in ourselves – particularly through the career pathways program. It’s about how to use your voice and sense of agency on sets and productions. And having the confidence to take up space.
Can you share what an “Abundance Mindset” means?
In our youth we try to instill an “abundance mindset” especially for our emerging artists who want to do photography or fine art commercially. Our students’ interest in the arts is exciting to be a part of, but we want to prepare them for the reality that it can also be challenging and competitive. We want that when one person wins, we all win. At LFP we are fortunate as an organization to be able to offer unique and rewarding opportunities for our artists to participate in solo residences and be a part of corporate campaigns such as this year’s Youth To The People collaboration. However, often only one or two artists can be a part of these initiatives. It can be hard for some of our students to not be selected. It is here where we try to get our students to lean into an abundance mindset. We want them to embrace that these types of opportunities grow our communities. And our growth is a win for all of us.
Sadly, but lastly, what does Latin X Heritage month mean for LFP?
For us, it is a unique month because our staff is majority Latina as well as our student body. But we try to reflect the diversity of Los Angeles, so we have Asian American students, black students, and afro Latina students. We love all our heritage months and embrace them all. But this month is special month because the work that our students create is from their lived experiences and their lived experiences are through that lens of being Latina in this country. Getting to honor and celebrate these experiences through this whole month is truly special. In addition, we also love it that our allies get to join in and celebrate as well.
