Meet Ted Soqui

Read About the Photographer Ted Soqui

Journalists are not propagandists. We don’t work for the police. We don’t work for the protestors. We’re witnesses.Ted Soqui

For more than four decades, Ted Soqui has walked the streets of Los Angeles with a camera, bearing witness to parts of the city that most people never see. Through his photojournalism, Soqui has documented pivotal moments in the city’s history. Rather than focusing on celebrity red carpets or polished press events, he has devoted his career to documenting communities in struggle, people demanding justice, and Los Angeles in its most raw and honest moments.

Born in 1962, Soqui grew up in San Francisco and moved to Los Angeles to study photography. He received his first important assignment in 1984 for LA Weekly, a newspaper that offered alternative views of news and culture that weren’t being covered by the mainstream media. At the time, the health crisis of AIDS had been recognized as an epidemic in Los Angeles but was still largely ignored. Covering that controversial story set the template for everything that followed: go where others aren’t looking, and photograph the people institutions have written off. For Soqui, being a journalist means constantly asking the question: “Who hasn’t had their voice spoken for?”

Soqui worked as a photographer at the LA Weekly for over 25 years, specializing in stories about people whose rights were abused and whose voices needed to be heard. He covered the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, when activists demanded government action amid mass death and silence; the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, sparked by the acquittal of police officers who beat Rodney King; Occupy LA in 2010, part of a national movement against economic inequality; and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2014 and 2020, which followed the killings of Michael Brown and George Floyd.

During many of these events, being seen with a camera could put a photographer in danger. Police and demonstrators both saw a camera as a potential threat, so journalists were at risk of being attacked or having their equipment destroyed. While documenting protests, Soqui has been shot at with rubber bullets and pepper sprayed. In order to photograph from inside the crowd without drawing attention as a target, Soqui hid his old mechanical Nikon camera inside a brown paper bag with a hole cut out for the lens. He would cover the bag with his hand, holding it low to compose a photo at waist level so that no one would notice what he was doing.

In 2014, Soqui was documenting a Black Lives Matter protest in South Los Angeles. He noticed a young man in the crowd with his face covered by an American flag bandana and took a photo. In 2020, Soqui’s photograph of the protestor became the basis for one of the most widely recognized images of that year’s Black Lives Matter protests, after artist Shepard Fairey reworked it into his print American Rage.

When protests end and news cycles move on, photographs and videos are often the only record left of what happened and who was there. Soqui’s photographs reveal his commitment to connecting with his subjects and communities with empathy and attentiveness, from close-up portraits to family businesses affected by protests to the empty city shut down by a pandemic. Soqui’s photographs don’t just document history, they insist that the people in them deserve to be remembered.

Questions

Write or discuss your responses.

• Soqui says his guiding question has always been, “Who hasn’t had their voice spoken for?” Consider who in your community hasn’t had their voice spoken for. What does it mean for a photograph to give someone a voice? How might including often-excluded perspectives offer a counter-narrative to the dominant story?
• Can a photograph ever fully represent a person’s experience, or does it always leave something out? Explain your response.
• Soqui has said he’s committed to taking pictures “from the people’s point of view, from a victim’s point of view.” How might the same event look different depending on where the photographer is standing, and why does that choice matter? What impact might that choice have on the story that gets told?
• Soqui has been shot at with rubber bullets and pepper spray while working. What does it tell you that he keeps photographing anyway? Do you think bearing witness to injustice is worth personal danger or sacrifice? Why or why not?
• Soqui says that photographers are “witnesses.” Do you think photographs are objective records, or do they always reflect the photographer’s perspective?
• Soqui’s work is now archived at academic institutions like the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where it will be accessible to the public for many years to come. Why does it matter that photographs of protests and communities are preserved long after the moment passes? Who gets to decide which moments from history are worth keeping?
• How might a photograph of a seemingly local issue bring that issue to a broader audience? What issue happening in your community deserves to be addressed by a larger audience? What photo might you take to make that happen?

A person who takes action to improve communities and society or to challenge injustice and inequality through activities such as organizing, protesting, educating others, or advocating for change.

A movement and organizing framework that emerged in 2013, founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin. The movement calls attention to violence and systemic racism experienced by Black communities in the United States, particularly around policing, and has organized major protests following incidents such as the killings of Michael Brown (2014), Ezell Ford (2014), Breanna Taylor (2020), and George Floyd (2020). BLM is both a specific organization and a broader slogan/movement used by many different groups and individuals, whose views on tactics and goals vary.

A story, perspective, or account that challenges and offers an alternative to a dominant, mainstream, or “master” narrative.

In different contexts, “justice” refers to both moral correctness and fairness, and also the rule of law. By contrast, “injustice” usually describes unfairness.