The Photojournalism Archive cited my Fonzieland interview with Carol Guzy, this year’s World Press Photo of the Year winner. The line they pulled: the longer she stays with a story, the sharper her instinct for the next frame. Six months in NYC court corridors to earn it.

Errands in Boyle Heights turned into a walk at LA State Historic Park. Downtown right there past the grass, dogs and slow mornings all around. The detours are the best part of living here.

Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈 I’m part of this lovely community, and this is from a studio shoot with the performer Imelda Glucose. Celebrating matters more with so much aimed at us right now. Pride is strongest when we remember to make room for everyone in it, too.

People keep asking me to unfollow Patagonia over the Pattie Gonia suit. Instead of picking a side, I read the court filings. The honest answer is messier than either camp wants. I wrote up what they actually say. open.substack.com/pub/fonziela...

Yoko Ono is 93. Nearly every piece in her retrospective at The Broad is an instruction, unfinished until a stranger acts on it. I photographed people doing it, then left my own mark in the last room. New on Fonzieland 👇

Two painters from Pulling Paint Murals hand-lettering the new Ministry of Coffee sign on Santa Monica Blvd this morning, building the orange mark up by hand. Brush-painted signage is getting rarer as vinyl takes over. Good to catch one going up on a Route 66 corner.

We hosted a ballots brunch this morning. Voter guides and polls on the wall, candidate platforms on post-its, friends who don’t all vote alike. California’s primary is June 2. If you’re registered, your ballot’s in your mailbox. We filled ours out and walked to City Hall to drop them in.

New modifier in the rotation, the Photek Softlighter. Tested it before a client portrait session this week. Beautiful soft light and more portable than expected. I was the only volunteer around.

I understand the pull toward detachment. With so much corruption, looking away can feel like self-preservation. I won’t. The camera stays up. June is coming fast in California. Vote. Stay informed. Help others stay informed. Bearing witness only counts if we keep showing up.

Capture One’s new beta denoising, tested on this frame at ISO 8000. Fur detail held, eye reflections clean. Impressed so far. (And the dog is patiently waiting for food.)

Three episodes into Half Man. Gadd is writing about repression and what it does to boys taught there’s only one way to be a man. I grew up gay watching versions of Ruben everywhere. The unsettling part is how legible it still feels in a climate actively empowering it.

Carol Guzy answered questions for my new Fonzieland essay on the photograph that won her the 2026 World Press Photo, the hallway it was made in, and the narrowing of press freedom in America. Read below 👇

US press freedom, 2025: 32 journalist arrests. 170 physical assaults, nearly as many in a single year as the previous three combined. Almost ninety percent during protests. Almost all tied to immigration enforcement. Been working on a longer piece for Fonzieland for a few weeks…

Several weeks pulling together a long-form photography fellowship application with single-digit acceptance odds. Worth doing for what the writing forced me to clarify about the next few years of work. That part doesn’t depend on the outcome. Always worth it 🚀📸🚀

Outside LAPD HQ in downtown LA before Tuesday’s Police Commission hearing on press freedom. City Hall, the seat of city government, reflected in the LAPD glass. Ten months into a federal court order prohibiting LAPD from interfering with journalists.

Tuesday at LAPD headquarters: Police Commission public comment ran heavy on press freedom. Journalists testified about LAPD treatment of press during May Day protests, days after a federal court order on the same issue. New on Fonzieland 👇

Today is World Press Freedom Day. 2025 was the deadliest year on record for journalists, with 129 killed per CPJ. Solidarity with every photojournalist doing this work where the cost is higher than mine. Showing up and attaching your name to what you saw is the work this day commemorates.

MacArthur Park, May Day 2026. Twenty years since the marches that changed Los Angeles. Full essay on Fonzieland: fonzieland.substack.com

Twenty years after the 2006 marches that changed Los Angeles, May Day returned to MacArthur Park. A documentary photo essay from the rally to City Hall, now on Fonzieland.

Dario Lee, in black and white. An older portrait I don’t share often. Monochrome Monday had me revisiting the catalog this morning and this one held up better than I remembered. Always fun to look at my library of work.

The visual record of last night’s WHCA Dinner exists because trained press photographers stayed inside the ballroom and kept working while everyone else hit the floor. Worth holding onto that as the feed fills up with everything else today. Some surreal images from Getty and AP photographers 👌

April 25, 1974: Portugal’s Carnation Revolution ended 48 years of dictatorship in six hours. I wrote about it last spring, when the echoes with the present US moment felt too close to ignore. A year on, nothing has aged. Photography is one way of refusing to forget. Read below:

Most of what keeps a photography career running never shows up in the photographs. This week: a workshop application, a fellowship, a newsroom pitch, and a grant in early prep. None of it paid. None of it visible. Worth naming for other artists running the same loop in private 🚀

Sony Imageworks updated their site with new headshots I photographed for their Los Angeles leadership team. Glad to help create polished, human, consistent photography across teams in different cities. LA based and available for editorial portraits, headshots, and team sessions. afonso.me

I spent months on The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender. Every frame handcrafted, no AI. It leaked before a single theatrical showing. The artists who built it deserve better. Sign the petition, push for a theatrical run. www.change.org/p/release-le...

Southern Africa. He walked toward the camera, held eye contact, kept moving. Earth Day reminder that we share this planet with something extraordinary, and we could do better by it.

More than 600 goats were released into Pasadena's Arroyo Seco this morning to clear wildfire fuel across nearly 100 acres. A two-month grazing program funded by the One Arroyo Foundation, in response to last year's Eaton Fire.

A kind note from Ana this week, two years after the session. Portraits have a strange relationship to time. You make them for a specific moment, and then people carry them into careers, profiles, lives you never see. The work doesn’t end when the files are delivered.

A decommissioned power line, the Eaton Fire, and a fellowship application that pulled me into a story I wasn't expecting. My first-ever documentary photography fellowship application. New on Fonzieland.

Once a year I turn the camera around. This year I wanted something quieter, just using two strobes, controlled falloff, a lot more simplicity. You learn a lot about your own work when you’re the one in the chair.

Four astronauts home safe after ten days around the Moon. First humans to make that trip in over fifty years. This is what happens when we invest in science. Welcome home, Artemis II. Photo Credit: NASA

I am emotional and awe-struck by these photographs taken by the astronauts on Orion for the Artemis II mission. Photos courtesy of NASA. What a gift.

Strong Aeon essay by journalist Cathy Otten on the ethics and limits of humanitarian journalism, and whether witnessing and documenting suffering actually leads to action. aeon.co/essays/how-might-humanitarian-journalism-be-done-better

Six years of documentary and photojournalism — protests, pandemic, public health, climate, humanitarian work in Haiti. Finally organized properly. This is some of the work that matters most to me. afonso.me/documentary

Artemis II’s first images are here. Commander Wiseman shot both from inside Orion, Earth through the capsule window first, then the full disk. Africa, auroras, the Iberian Peninsula lit at the curve. Two frames that together say everything.

Surprised a friend for her birthday today. Quick flight up, quick flight back. Some things are just worth it.

No Kings. West Hollywood Park, March 28. Speeches, live music and a protest along Santa Monica Blvd and San Vicente. West Hollywood showed up.

New profile: Teri Hendrich Cusumano fought for eight years to close animation's gender pay gap. Then she lost everything that defined her. What she's building now is remarkable. Read full article here: open.substack.com/pub/fonziela...

Turned down a project I was excited about this week. Not because it wasn’t right, it genuinely was, but the timing conflicts were clear. Freelance life means learning to let go gracefully. 🫶

Patti Smith closed Democracy Now!’s 30th anniversary with People Have the Power, with a surprise guest Bruce Springsteen on stage. Watched the livestream LA. Exactly what today needed.

Democracy Now! turns 30 tonight. Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, Angela Davis at Riverside Church. Live at 4pm PST / 7pm ET → democracynow.org

History is remarkably consistent on what happens when citizens are told their neighbors are the enemy. The danger isn’t that it’s subtle. The danger is that it becomes normal. Let’s keep documenting what we see. Let’s keep talking to our neighbors. Let’s learn from each other’s stories.

Yesterday’s documentary photography session was one of those conversations that runs long because it should. An artist, her workspace, and a story worth taking the weekend to get right. I can’t wait to share more soon.

Prepping for a new Stories of Resilience session this Friday. Research done, interview questions mapped, gear packed. The work before the work. Every conversation in this series reveals something new about how people rebuild. More soon.

Rembrandt’s Saint Bartholomew at the Getty, 1661. The conversations about light and the human face were well underway long before photography arrived. Worth checking in with occasionally.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 at the Getty Center. Over 150 works, 100+ artists. One of the most important photography exhibitions in LA right now. On through June 14. I can't recommend it enough. The photo below is by Gordon Parks.

Joshua Tree National Park. The high desert has a way of making you feel small in exactly the right way.

I love you, LA 😍💕 What a sunset today…

New on Fonzieland: my first corporate headshot gig in a decade. A month of prep, new gear, my first assistant hire, and nineteen headshots for Sony Imageworks.

Joshua Tree, sunset. The desert at golden hour, everything goes quiet and warm at the same time.