What LA Reporters Can’t Tell, LA Photographers Must Show
When words fail, pictures speak.
As Los Angeles erupts in unrest, the headlines try to explain it:
Buildings burn
Communities clash
Protests turn violent
But those words, no matter how carefully chosen, will never prepare you for what it looks like when the world breaks in front of your eyes.
Because until you see it, you don’t feel it, and until you feel it, you can’t understand it.
Enter, Photographer
Reporters can frame a story, but photographers frame reality.
Not the sanitized version, or the angle chosen for political convenience.
But the raw, bleeding, heartbreaking truth is captured in 1/1000th of a second and burned into your soul.
During the current LA riots, photographers have once again become the frontline eyes of a story too big, too fast, and too painful to put into a few neat paragraphs.
Their images are doing what news anchors and op-eds can’t: They’re making you look, even when you’d rather look away.
A Mexican flag flying before smoke with cops behind it…
Rioters standing their ground against armed security and Law Enforcement…
Officers in full riot gear staring down teenage protestors holding signs instead of weapons…
No caption needed; the photo says it all.
It’s a War Zone
The images coming out of LA don’t just resemble war photography, they are war photography.
Urban war
Civil unrest
Societal fracture
They echo the chaos of many conflicts of our past, yet the piled up bodies are not there, yet…
These riot images will last far longer than the noise of the moment; they’ll become part of our cultural memory…
They’ll haunt some, inspire others, and change a few forever.
Because, until we see it, we don’t understand it, not completely.
The photographer’s job isn’t to make life pretty; it’s to make reality impossible to ignore.
In times of peace, we (photographers) are artists.
In times of chaos, we are essential.
We stand between danger and documentation.
We take shots, not with a weapon, but with a lens; we will risk our lives to ensure the truth isn’t lost to the spin.
Our job is to run toward the fire, not because we want to, but because someone has to show the world what the hell is actually happening.
In a society drowning in headlines, hot takes, and hashtags, a powerful image still cuts through the noise. A real and raw photo stops one in an infinite scroll, grabs the viewer by the heart, and refuses to let go.
Photography is Magic
If you want facts, read a report.
If you want the truth, look at a photo.
Reporters write the story.
Photographers show it.
And in moments like this, where humanity hangs in the balance, we need both.
But more than anything, we need the courage to see.
- Zac Small
Owner and Operator of Z Photography and Media