Los Angeles Will Always Be Home — Even When It's Not Easy
Growing up in LA shapes you in ways you don't notice until you leave. And once you've left and come back, you see the city completely differently.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I grew up around graffiti and street art — that's literally where the name Asmek came from, my tagging name. Before there was a camera or a DAW, there were walls and spray cans. The city's visual energy is in everything I make.
Leaving Changes the Frame
I studied Visual Media Arts at Emerson, which meant time on the East Coast — Boston, then shooting up and down the map. Distance does something strange: it turns the things you took for granted into the things you miss most. The light. The sprawl. The specific way the 6th Street Bridge looks at the right hour.
"You don't really see your city until you've stood somewhere else and felt it pulling you back."
Home Isn't Simple
LA isn't easy. It's expensive, it's contradictory, it can feel like it's chewing through everyone trying to make something in it. But that tension is exactly what makes it home. When I photograph the streets here, I'm not romanticizing it — I'm trying to catch it honestly, the beautiful and the hard in the same frame. Wherever the work takes me, this is the place I'm always shooting back toward.
