Only people that understand addiction will know: once you enter this world, you either become a criminal, a drug dealer, or the addict. I basically hustled my life, living couch to couch between the streets, destroying my family’s lives, going to jail, all that sh*t. Then 2015 came around, and I got sober out in Orange County. I stayed living in this sober bubble and my life went from technicolor to a flat black and white.
When you first get sober, any and every part of your life becomes a puzzle. Every task feels like figuring it out the first time: “How do I do this sober?” By year three, I started integrating by going to concerts and hanging out with other sober people, but I didn’t really think about photography again until around 2020. I was talking about it to a friend, and they were like, “Why don’t you take pictures? You talk about it all the time. What’s stopping you now?” And even though I had some gear, I was right back at square one: How the f*ck do I even do this sober?
It just turned out that a homie I used to kick it with was playing a DIY show in April of ’21. I saw the flyer – I didn’t know who Dead City was, I didn’t know who N8NOFACE was, and I didn’t know who Barrage was. In my mind, it was simple: “What’s the harm in going? I wanna see Phil.” For the first time since I stopped drinking and doing drugs, I brought out the same beat-up camera my brother gave me in eras past. I was at a crossroads… Everything had shut down [pandemic timing] in the world, and in my life—I was processing a breakup, lost my job, had to put my dog down. It was a gnarly year.
I started heading out to LA, found the location, and sat in this abandoned pond watching all these teenagers pile in. The sun started going down and I didn’t have a good flash, so I took a shot of the kids tagging on the walls. Then these girls came up to me like,“Hey, you’re so cute! Will you take a picture of us?” I’m trying to remember whatever I learned back in high school about lighting, ISO, and manual settings, all the time shaking, praying that the photo comes out okay. Phil asked for a shot of his band, Who Gives a F*ck, then I heard N8NOFACE for the first time. Then Barrage, then Section 8. It’s still kind of a blur to me because I was so overstimulated that I started to step back and think, “There’s 2,000 kids here. What the fuck is going on?” I had never seen anything like that.
The fireworks went off, and I saw and met Knucklehead Tom. Him and his buddies were wearing leather jackets, and I said “Hey, can I take a picture of you guys?” They’re like, “For sure.” I took it, and my screen went black – “Let me take that one more time, guys” – that second shot came out perfect.
I took maybe five photos that night, and as the place got shut down in total chaos, I left so so so high. It was a feeling I never had in sobriety.
That night gave me an overwhelming feeling of missing out on so much. Dead City posted another flyer for the May show under the 110 bridge, and I had to go again… That one blew my mind open even wider. I think I took maybe 10 pictures, I don’t even think I took flicks of the bands. I watched everything from the moment it started until the cops raided the spot.
That’s why the shot of the pit under the bridge was really sick. I saw the U-Haul, put two and two together, and knew that as everyone was getting there, you could actually see everyone’s face from my point of view. ‘Oh, you were there?’ This is like your high school senior class right here.
From there it progressed. I started going out more, and OGV came up after maybe six months of holding out on everyone’s photos <haha>. I saw The Runts, met Nick, met their videographer Danny, met Roman and the guys from Nothing Less, and met all these photographers. I started developing friendships and relationships with passionate people who had goals, who were out there just doing it, having fun. Every day to me became an awesome day. People actually started stopping me at shows saying, “OGV, your fucking work is so rad. I started shooting because of you.” A few people reached out asking, “How do you go to these environments sober?” It developed into community.
To be able to embrace a sober life and integrate back into society, the camera was my tool. It was my way back in. I mean, I dropped out of high school at 15, I didn’t even graduate. But I knew I had something back in high school photo class — I loved being in the darkroom, developing film, the smell of the fixer — but it’s not like my mom was supportive of art school, and I thought it cost too much money anyways. Years later, my mentor Pat told me, “You like taking pictures?” and handed me an old Minolta film camera. I shot that thing into the dirt, collecting rolls of film I could never afford to develop.
So when I stepped back into shooting shows, I shot like I was shooting film, even on digital. I’m very meticulous – it’s about timing and what I see. I like to walk amongst the crowd, look at people’s faces, what they’re wearing, how the light catches them. In 20 or 30 years, if these images are still around, how cool will it be for that kid to look back when they’re older and say, “I was there”? Although I do it for myself, I’m doing this for the kids and the bands too. You should have these pictures, you should see what you’ve done.
Back in 2009 when I was still using, I came across a Joker brand shirt at a Goodwill with the LA Hands portrait on it… I stole it. I wore it all the time without knowing whose work it was until I looked up Estevan Oriol, falling in love with his black-and-white photography. Fast forward to 2022, Frankie gave me a chance to put my work up at the To Live and Die in LA exhibit right under the Sixth Street Bridge, and Estevan was on that same wall. To be standing in the same gallery as him, knowing I discovered his work from a stolen T-shirt years ago, then telling him in-person and having a laugh together – was such a surreal turnaround moment. Then Edward Colver followed my account and invited me over to hang out – I grew up with his pictures on my wall. I zipped over, took portraits of him, and left him one of my books. He gave me so many compliments on my work.
When you meet these legends, they’re human. They don’t want a fangirl telling them their life story; I just talked to him like a normal person. That’s how I ended up being brought into the LA6 collective alongside Merrick Morton, Suitcase Joe, Estevan, Frankie, and most recently, Atiba Jefferson. As a collective we’re lucky to meet for dinner at someone’s house every 6 months, with how busy our schedules are. But the idea is to take our body of work covering Los Angeles to galleries around the world.
When Joe told me, “You need to put out a book,” I told him, “If I do a book, I’m not doing some hard-copy $60 book. I’m doing a $20 zine that kids can afford.” Bo at Burn Barrel helped me layout my first zine, and next thing I knew, The Last Bookstore and the Punk Rock Museum were stocking it. At shows, if kids didn’t have the full money, I’d tell them, “Just give me 10 bucks, take it.” I still do this for fun. I don’t do this for money or try to tell myself I can do this as a corporate career, because that would take all the life out of it.
That’s why I f*ck with Dead Relatives so heavy, because you’re doing the exact same thing. You’re building a platform to show the world all of these underground subcultures — tattoo artists, graffiti writers, musicians, photographers, skater kids — under one roof. It’s something reachable, affordable and physical that you can hold in your hands. All you have to do is subscribe. And at the end of the day, the take-home isn’t selling out or the cash flow; the payoff is just creating it.
You have to understand: I got sober at 32, but emotionally, I was 15. Even the simplest things that everyone’s been doing most of their life were very difficult for me. I had to start from the bottom — living in a recovery house, taking the bus, working telemarketing jobs. My whole life before that just colors and chaos, moving fast, but going nowhere. As soon as I got sober, things got simple. But my brain and physical self function differently, and I’ve had to retrain myself that my overthinking will kill me if I let it. So having to put yourself out there as an artist and second-guess everything you do is something I fight every day.
Shooting pictures really helps me slow down. Film slows you down because you have to trust what you shot and hope it comes out. I feel that way with digital too — I won’t even look at my work for a week or two after a show because I want to look at it when I can really focus. At a Dead City show, 15 photographers post their shots that night. I won’t post mine until a month later. Most of the time, I just really want to be in the moment and see a good show.
When Kristine hit me up with the concept for Coalition over Competition, I thought it was really rad: women coming together to support one another. That project inspired me to expand into studio work and portraiture. I wanted to create a space for women to get their pictures taken where they feel safe, respected, and comfortable – because you hear the stories, you know? Women talk about male photographers taking advantage, acting creepy, or making them feel uncomfortable and objectified just to get a photo. I didn’t want any of that energy.
Photographing women requires a different level of care — not in a bad way, but because we carry so many layers of insecurity, worrying about every angle or how we look. When you bring a woman into the studio, you’re holding space for all of that internal noise. But when you build that trust, show them the shot on the back of the camera, and they say, ‘You made me feel so beautiful’… Man, hearing that? Unmatched. That’s the real reward right there.
Working in the studio is another way for me to slow things down — shows are chaotic, but the studio is my world. I get to take your idea, my eye, and create something cool. I do this because if I don’t transmit these feelings through the camera, I’ll just be bottled up with them. I’ve held myself back for so long, and I didn’t get an opportunity to live a second life like this just to let it go to waste.
