Yvonne Estrada

Statement

I started out thinking I might become a professional photographer, but the demands of being a single mother and needing to support myself and my son led me in other directions. I’ve been an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) since the 1990s and this has allowed me to drive my ambulance around Los Angeles County every day for years. I bring my camera with me and am always alert to the visual possibilities in this crazy, contradictory, beautiful and treacherous landscape.

People who live in L.A. sometimes forget that the whole West Coast used to be Mexico. It’s funny and infuriating to me that the artifacts of my people are “on tour” in a museum, as if the culture isn’t rooted in this very soil.