Photographer Pocho1 Documents Undocumented Youth
Pocho1 has become the go-to person for the immigrant youth movement.
May 15, 2013— -- Every social movement needs a photographer to document its iconic moments. Pocho1 has become the go-to person for the immigrant youth movement in Los Angeles.
At rallies and civil disobedience, Pocho1 is there. At a funeral for a veteran leader or to capture an intimate portrait for a-day-in-the-life series, the 30-year-old documentarian focuses his camera to tell the stories of movers and shakers in the activist community on the left – particularly young undocumented immigrants who've come out of the shadows.
He says he feels right at home. He considers his subjects his friends and family. He's been around activism all his life. His parents were union organizers in the farmworker movement.
A self-described radical though mellow and pragmatic, Pocho1 embraces the nickname given to him by Rudy Acuña, father of Chicano studies and a former professor of his.
Half Mexican and half Irish, Pocho1 wears his identity on his sleeve: "Pocho1" is tattooed on the inside of his left wrist. On his right forearm he has "Pocho Rising," in his own design. He has a third on the inside of his lower lip.
He's proud of being pocho and says everyone should be proud of who they are and where they're from.
Watch the video above to see him in action.
