Louie Morales
South El Monte, USA
ARTIST BIO
I am a photographer living in Los Angeles, CA. I am a Mexican immigrant who arrived in the U.S. at the age of 6. Today, while I feel fully integrated in every day life as an American, I am in limbo with a DACA permit that offers no real path to citizenship but rather stalls us from becoming a citizen. As a first generation immigrant, finding a way to support the family prevented me from acquiring an education, but I still follow my passion for photography in my spare time. This obsessive drive helped me delve into it with all of the love and admiration for the art and allowed me to explore and become a self taught photographers.
I am greatly inspired by the old masters from Magnum Photos and a few others. I take an approach that allows me to capture photos in my own way while paying attention to the work I am creating. It is important to me to not just take a nice photo, although if I encounter a nice moment I will not shy away from capturing the image. A nice photo is just that, a nice photo. When I can create a body of work I find it very important to capture in a humanistic way. There is a slight documentary element to the work by interacting with the subject is just as fulfilling as taking the photo. Everyone has a story to tell and a reason for being, even in themed work.
I also love exploring and finding new things in new places and taking the camera with me not only lets me reflect on myself and who I am when I look at an image, but the images themselves are a testament to my presence. I was there.
PROJECT STATEMENT
This body of work was created after becoming inspired by William Albert Allard's book, Vanishing Breed. I have ridden my bike up and down the San Gabriel river ever since I was a 12 year old. Along the river way and the other interconnecting rivers, there are cowboys. There are thousands of them stretching from the mountains to the ocean in the Greater Los Angeles County. Ever since I was a kid, I was curious about them but never had a reason to approach them. Then I bought a camera in 2013 but focused on other projects as I was developing my approach and learning everything I could about photography. I also found it difficult to talk to strangers and eventually all of that went away when I began to feel comfortable in my own skin identity as a photographer. A huge part of it all was maturing and becoming an adult. Then when I was 24 I bought my dream camera and wanted to find a project to focus on. So I dedicated it to the cowboys. I've been working on this project for 5-6 years along the riverbed and slowly refined my craft to eventually create work I was proud of.
This body of work is me capturing the old west in my backyard. Cowboys. They are alive and well and they cary on with old traditions and lifestyles. Slowly, city ordinances and project developments are encroaching into their lifestyle and I truly believe that this community will be decimated if they do not advocate for their heritage. In the last few years there have been unions and groups coming together to save this lifestyle. I went from seeing them as just cowboys to a people with a cause and doubled down on documenting them.
