UNTITLED, by Khaliq F., age 15. Figueroa Corridor, CA

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Khaliq was a participant in Venice Arts’ documentary project, Picturing Health in the Figueroa Corridor neighborhood of South Los Angeles. This was the first site in this eight-community project, sponsored by The California Endowment, which covers diverse areas of Southern and Central California. Khaliq and the other teens in South L.A. were exploring health issues affecting their lives, including lack of access to healthy foods, inadequate access to health services, and graffiti and uncollected trash on the streets.

In his own words, Khaliq described himself as “a mild-mannered teen. I am growing up in Los Angeles (South Central). I really enjoy taking photos of my neighborhood. When I look through the lens of my camera, I can see the world from a different perspective. That’s why I enjoyed doing this project. I really didn’t think about tagging until we (photo group) went to the alley around the corner of my house and I was looking at all the tagging and was like, ‘oh yeah, that’s a big issue’… just messing up the neighborhood because it doesn’t look really good. (I also took) pictures of the trash on the ground and people sleeping on the beds on the matter where you go it’s always there. The drugs, they’re always going to be there. I would try to change those, but they’ll be there any way. Me growing up in South LA I don’t really think of healthy stuff cuz you go to a liquor store and the first thing that pops up is something fattening. The healthy stuff is all the way in the back; it’s always hidden. So I don’t really think of that, even when you go to McDonald’s, that chart, they always have it way in the back, or else clean ones, just different ones.”