Blog Post: Ellen Giuliano

I was sitting on the bus with my best friend from New York, when this woman gets up from her seat and moves to the one in front of us. She looks at me and says, “You know, Jesus talks to me. And he don’t like what he’s seeing. Now you know what I’m talking about.” Well really I had no clue, but she went on anyway. “Now you keep up what you’re doing and you won’t be going to Heaven. We both know where that means you’re going. So you better stop doing what you been doing. I know and you know what it is, and God knows.” All I could think was, “O Crap! She saw us taking pictures on the bus!” But then she got up and moved seats and expressed a similar epiphany with another passenger.
Needless to say, I kept my camera away for the remainder of that bus trip. However, that ride was to be my first of many as part of a class assignment for Jim Hubbard’s Visual Communication and Social Change course. This semester we’ve been reading about and discussing the field of participatory photography. The idea of our projects is that students in the class are actually the ones participating in photographic empowerment. I chose to do a series of photos on L.A.’s public transportation, in the tradition of photographer Bruce Davidson. Of course the primary mode of public transport in L.A. is buses, not subways.
My bus rides have really gotten me to see and experience a side of L.A. that lives in close proximity to USC, but that is kept invisible. In a city that is associated with cars, people who ride the buses, in a sense, are marginalized. When I first started this project, I felt like I was an outsider, stepping out of mainstream L.A. for a few hours to take pictures of what probably can be considered the silent majority. However after three months or so, I get on the buses with much more comfort and ease, and feel almost at home with the people riding along side me. There is a certain camaraderie that exists among those who sit together day after day. Together, the people on the bus are their own community: the mother with her baby, the teenager with his puppy, the crazy evangelical, the bum with his bottle of booze poorly concealed, and even the USC undergraduate.

Series Navigation

«Blog Post: Justin IwataBlog Post: Tony Lazaro Ruiz»