Tucked away in a charming house built in 1908 in East Los Angeles, photographer Greg Bojorquez drinks coffee and watches Turner Classic Movies until the Dodgers game starts. Unassuming, Greg is one my favorite living photographers, an artist who often turns his camera on what he knows, only to show the viewer something they would never see. His fearless, natural approach is complimented by his rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, and a comedic local sensitivity. As we talk about the neighborhood he grew up in, he points out the window at a street vendor who’s ripping around the corner on a pretty nice golf cart, and we both wonder how that guy is doing so well, skeptical. A witness to all the comings and goings, Greg is an active participant, observing with keen interest and an intuitive sense of timing.

Represented by Galerie Bene Taschen, Greg has exhibited beautiful new editions of black and white and color prints this year, showing off images from his legendary East Siders project in the Body/Soul exhibition at Guerrero Gallery in Los Angeles and at Art Düsseldorf in Berlin. A selection of his exceptional hip hop culture images showed at Hip Hop - Living a Dream at Saatchi Gallery in London. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired two of his East Siders images this summer, adding the silver gelatin prints to the collection of the largest art museum in the western United States. Over movies and baseball, we talked about his experience and survival in fine art photography.

*Kids on the 2 Bus heading to a party in Hollywood,* CA, 2010

TRINA: How did you discover that you were interested in photography? What was the spark?

GREG: I liked cameras when I was a kid. I took some high school classes, and I was good at it. I had an opportunity to go to a school for photography, I was offered a scholarship, but I didn't take it. My parents didn't go to college, and they knew nothing about getting financial aid, and I didn't look into it, so I didn't do it. Way later on in life, I took some classes at Los Angeles City College and got an attitude adjustment, AA, with cinema studies and filmmaking. I started taking pictures more and making money with it.

At the same time, I was taking photos around East LA, Boyle Heights and Montebello, like of the people, the subculture. I was going to underground hip hop music functions with my friends, like Unity, Wake Up Show, and all these different shows and people would see me with a camera there. I'd start getting little jobs here and there. The LA Weekly started printing my pictures of East LA subculture. There was a photo editor there giving me jobs, and then the next photo editor started giving me jobs and I eventually shot a cover. I did a lot of covers for LA Weekly. I went full time in photography in ’97 because I was able to support myself, and I made it a career.

TRINA: Who gave you your first camera?

GREG: My dad and my grandfather got me this Nikon F2, probably around 1989. That was my first camera. My father had a camera that was like his Pentax, I think it was a ME Super, but it wasn't completely manual. I wanted something completely manual, and I got that Nikon F2.

TRINA: Do you crop your images or is everything you print full frame?

GREG: It's full frame, mostly. I never crop. I mean, I don't want to. Sometimes you work for some magazine, and they crop, and you get pissed off about it. Like, ‘Why’d you crop it like this?’ I always try to shoot full frame, whatever format it is.

When I was when I was in high school, I had this good photography teacher. The first projects we did were on the four by five Calumet camera. When you shoot four by five, everything's upside down and backwards in the ground glass. Each sheet of film, back then, I think was like a dollar, two dollars or something, right? That’s nothing now. One holder has two pieces of film so when you take the picture, it's got to be composed right.

When I started taking pictures with a 35mm camera, I had the same types of rules, it had to look good. Even when digital happened, if it didn't look right, I wouldn't take the pictures. Some people would. There was a time when photo retouching and Photoshop were starting to be used a lot. ‘Oh, dude, just take this shot and we'll fix it in post.’ All these people would say this shit. And I'd be like, ‘Nah, I want to get it right looking, you know?’ Yeah, 100%.

TRINA: You’ve been a working photographer for a good chunk of time. How do you feel about how advertising and press work overlaps with your fine artwork? Do you feel it impacts your vibe, your intuitive way of seeing?

GREG: It's hard because sometimes you have jobs that are art directed. You got to work with something that a client wants. It's not like you can just do your own thing all the time. If I could photograph projects that are closer to what I do, what they call fine art, then I'd probably enjoy it more.

There was this one magazine, they looked at my East Siders work and they sent me to another part of the country in Austin, where there's an East LA type thing going on. They sent me there on a Monday through a Wednesday and they expected me to shoot what I've done in like a span of years. They expected me to go over there for three days and get it. It's not going to happen.

There are people that go to places in the world, and they go there for like a week and then they do a whole book on it. I go to the art show and people say, ‘Greg, what do you think?’ I said, ‘Well, it looks like this person went to Cuba for a week and then they made a whole art show and a book out of it.’ And they're all, ‘You're being a hater.’ I ask, ‘Hey, did this person go to Cuba for like a week?’ They're all, ‘Yeah, that's what they did.’ I'm all, ‘You, see?’

TRINA: So that’s what they wanted to do.

GREG: Yeah. I mean, you're not hiding it, are you? Why would you be hiding it? It's like, you're going to do a whole book project in one week? I don't know. But there's just so many books now. There are so many books everywhere. Everything's a book, you know? People do an opening, there's a book. Everything's a book, a book, a book. There’s so many books, I don't even have anywhere to put them. I go to the library and check out books.

TRINA: Who are some of your favorite photographers?

GREG: My first favorite photographers were Diane Arbus, Bruce Davidson and Robert Frank.

TRINA: When I think about East Siders and The Americans, I see some of the same ideas, photographing people who are from different parts of the same world.

GREG: Robert Frank, The Americans is a really good book. Yes, I've been looking at Robert Frank's work since I was like three. My first memory is because he took the picture on the Exile on Main Street record cover in 1972. That was the year of the album, the year I was born. The name of the photo was Tattoo Shop and it's on the cover; it's a great album cover. It has the guy with the balls in his mouth that has all kinds of weird shit on it. It’s Robert Frank.

As far as photography goes for me, one of the first things I experienced was looking at my dad's albums, because when I was three, I was not allowed to wake up my parents and my dad kept his record collection in my bedroom. I used to look at all the records and play them. Exile on Main Street was a good one because there was actually a group of postcards inside.

Later in life, I really liked The Americans. Like you have these nice old cars, you have this one of people standing in a building and there's an American flag. He was very fortunate because he had another photographer friend named William Claxton and he did a book called Jazzlife. Robert Frank went on the road with William Claxton when he was shooting Jazzlife, and Frank was shooting The Americans. That falls in line, at the time, of Jack Kerouac. These guys were on the road, both photographers, one shooting jazz and one shooting America. That must have been a really great time to be a photographer. Not everybody was taking pictures, so the pictures were rare. For his time, William Claxton’s the best jazz photographer easy. I got to meet him.

When I did the book East Siders, I told the publisher, ‘Hey, what if I called it, The Mexican Americans?’ And the publisher was like, ‘Oh, are you kidding me?’ I'm all, ‘Dude, what would you tell them? Someone else? About naming something of their culture? Americans, you know what I mean? Would you answer back the same way?’

But it kind of is. All my book is mostly Mexican Americans, East Siders. I mentioned that, but I wasn't serious. I was going to call it East Siders all along.

TRINA: When you were photographing your friends in the neighborhood, what made you turn your camera on everybody else around?

GREG: A lot of it was friends, and a lot of it was looking around. I’d take the bus. I’d ride a bike. I'd drive my car. I got pulled over so much driving all over, I lost my license for a year. They pull you over and give you a ticket, and you could fight it but then the cop shows up, so you're going to lose. Eventually you get a certain number of points, you lose your license.

I was looking to take pictures, man. I had a Cadillac and was in my 20’s and you just get pulled over for that anyway. You could only fight so many tickets and that was just the way it was. I lost my license, then I’d take the bus or ride my bike. I started driving without a license, and I'd wear a straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt and play jazz real loud and never get pulled over. But if you're in a Cadillac with your head shaved, driving around, you look too cool, and cops will just pull you over for being cool. I drove around playing loud jazz music in an astro van and I wouldn't get pulled over. There's people that remember that. I called the van, Vañiaco. That's a true story.

TRINA: What do you like about Bruce Davidson?

GREG: Bruce Davidson, he did the East 100th Street [photography book]. He did the series called Brooklyn Gang on a gang called The Jokers. It was good. There's this real famous photo of a guy; he's folding cigarettes up on his sleeve and there's a girl combing her hair in a mirror of a cigarette machine [Couple, 1959]. That was like a favorite photo of mine. I think that really made me want to start smoking cigarettes. Yeah, I’d go to Jim's Burgers and buy a pack of cigarettes for a $1.25, five quarters.

TRINA: Isn't that crazy? $1.25. Dude, they're like $18 or something now. I never would have thought.

GREG: Not that much. Maybe like the best American spirits are like $15? You can get a pack of Winstons for like $9. Winston’s are the original American Spirit, no preservatives. So, Bruce Davidson, the Brooklyn gang. I like that one a lot. That was a good project. And then there's Diane Arbus, she just photographed weirdness, you know? Weirdness is good, but when she was doing it, it was fucking new. You know what I mean? And now weirdness and shock are just a gimmick. It's not even special anymore. But she did it when it meant something.

TRINA: Diana Arbus, she sought out those people to shoot, like triplets.

GREG: She photographed retarded people, transvestites, midgets. She probably watched like Frederico Fellini movies. Like La Strada, Nights of Cabiria. All this fucking weirdness.

TRINA: Yeah. The albino sword swallower at a carnival.

GREG: Yeah, sword swallowers. There was later another photographer, a woman in New York named Arlene Gottfried. We’re in the same roster at Galerie Bene Taschen, based in Cologne, but she's passed away. She did very similar photography but in her own style. Arlene, she passed away from cancer and her brother was Gilbert Gottfried, the comedian. He talked about his sister being a photographer on Howard Stern. Gilbert, he was always on there. He died, too. That's crazy.

*In Line for The Casualties*, The Glass House, Pomona, CA, 2012

TRINA: How do you approach people that you don't know to take their photo?

GREG: You got to get used to it. I don't know, maybe it's easier now or maybe it's not, but you used to do it and some people used to tell you to fuck off basically. And some people want to take pictures. Some people are photo ready these days. People take selfies these days. It was probably easier for her [Diane Arbus] because she was a woman and didn't look intimidating. I think when you're a kid, it's easier.

Like there's this guy that's done work for me and I met him at Hollenbeck Park. I was over there on my bicycle and he and his girlfriend had cameras. I tried to talk to them and tell him I was a photographer, and I was like, ‘Hey, let me check out your camera.’ They seriously thought I was gonna rob their fucking cameras.

Maybe it's more challenging for a person like me, you know, ‘Hey, let me take your picture.’ Sometimes if you're a certain person approaching people, it's much easier, like when you're a kid and unintimidating. When I was doing it, not everyone had a camera. Now people have cameras all the time. It's fucking normal, but when I first had cameras, people were like, ‘Wow, you have a camera. Blah, blah, blah.’ I have a camera on the bus, and there were some kids that would think I was the cops. They'd go, ‘Oh, look, five-o, five-o.’ I don't want to have on my best clothes going around, taking pictures on the bus, and in the street. I probably looked beat down, and one of the kids says, ‘There's a lot of cops that go around, like you, looking like a bum.’ I'm like, ‘What?’ That'll piss me off. They said I looked like a bum! But, you know, what am I going to fucking do, get dressed up in a fucking tuxedo on a bus?

TRINA: What, are photographers supposed to be wearing a uniform?

GREG: Yeah, dude, like I show up to the photo shoot and they say, ‘You don't look like a photographer.’ I had one of those brown vests and I told the assistant, ‘Hey, go get me my vest.’ I put on the brown vest, and I say, ‘Hey, do I look like a photographer now?’

TRINA: Ridiculous.

GREG: I don’t know what happened to that vest. It used to have a Rat Fink patch on it. Everyone has cameras and it's way different now. People are on Instagram looking to be photographed.

TRINA: It's different in terms of catching things that are casual or even chancy. There are too many cameras.

GREG: Arbus wasn't photographing the civil rights movement. There were certain photographers that did do it, like [Steve] Schapiro did it, you know? He also shot like The Godfather and Taxi Driver. He was a stills photographer. But no one's asking her [Diane Arbus] about that, she's taking pictures of what she liked to look at.

There are people out there making paintings in their studio and it's such a good notion, to be in your own space and make your art. Like, what the fuck, you [photographers] have to go out in the street and find something. See, both have their challenges. But if 2,000 people are photographing the shit that's going on and every person has a camera, you know what? I'm tired of looking at that shit. I want to take pictures that I like to look at. You see this one?

He points up to One Less, a painting by Chris Yormick, on the wall in his living room, and I nod.

GREG: I like looking at it. It's pretty good, right?

TRINA: Yes.

GREG: It doesn’t have someone having a bad day. I've taken pictures of people having a bad day, but this is a good day. I want to take pictures that are nice to look at. Is that wrong? Does it have to be shock value? Does it have to be a person on the ground almost dead? I don't want to look at it. We've seen it.

TRINA: Are you working on anything right now?

GREG: I'm starting over.

TRINA: Starting over? From scratch?

GREG: I’m getting into things I liked when I was a kid. I liked cars and I liked music. I got to start over. I got to take it a different way. There are other artists that I like. I like Johnny Thunders. He’s a great American artist. I like painters like Lucian Freud. I went to his Retrospective at MOCA. He was a good painter. I like his color palette, it’s nice.

I'm sorry, but I'm over political art. People do it to be popular now. Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Bruce Davidson, they all took pictures, for the most part, they liked to look at. Some of them are maybe hard to look at but they all have their value. They're good. Even Ed Ruscha did a good series, the Twentysix Gasoline Stations series. It's really good. He paints. I like his letterings and paintings. I'm not going to say he's my favorite artist, but he took a good picture.

TRINA: He did the whole Sunset Boulevard series.

GREG: He did the gas stations. But there’s not that many photographers up on the high fine art range.

TRINA: Yeah. I love Dennis Hopper.

GREG: Yeah, he was good. He was in the art scene.

TRINA: Yeah, very much, and just everywhere. He was somebody who was able to take pictures of lots of different kinds of people too. With East Siders, it's interesting because you start out taking photos of your friends, but eventually you're taking photos of everybody down the street or at the market or the park.

GREG: Yeah, you got to be able to go out and do it and it's not always easy. Especially then. It was very dangerous. The '90s and East LA was very dangerous.

Like the guy on the front cover of my [East Siders] book, Jack, you met him. At one point he says, ‘Dude, you're going to get shot.’ Then there's another photographer friend that's well-known and I said, ‘Dude, like, this shit's kind of crazy, you know?’ And he pointed out, there was another photographer that did a project out here from New York and a guy like that, if anything got bad, he could just take off back to New York. He's all, ‘You live right there.’ You know, he's very right.

I think at one point, I wanted to keep shooting the project at the same level, but to do it, it was too dangerous to be out in the street all over the place. I was getting harassed by police and gangs for taking pictures. They don't know I’m some photographer and they could say, ‘Oh, that guy's with our enemy,’ you know? I'm just taking pictures, though.

It got to a point where I started having a career in photography. If you get in bad trouble with somebody in your car and I’m responsible for my car, it could ruin my whole career. And that was just a certain time in my life. I have no interest to photograph cholos anymore. I don't have a fantasy with fucking gang members. It was just the time of my life and the way things looked then, and I thought it was cool. My go-to is always rock ‘n’ roll. I like rock music. I'm fucking rock and roll. You want to ask what I am? ‘What are you?’ ‘Rock ‘n’ roll. I’m rock ‘n’ roll.’

Anyhow, hip hop was big. I did a lot of work with that, and I spent a lot of time with that. I was a big fan, but at one time, it was something else and it was fun. It turned into something that it’s not anymore. We used to go to good hip hop events.

TRINA: Like even at the house parties, in backyards.

GREG: Yeah, but then everyone started killing each other.

TRINA: Yeah.

GREG: There used to be a lot of parties in East LA, there was always a Simmons party, and in Pico Rivera, there was a Passons party. They’d say, ‘Off Passons.’ That was a big street in Pico.

Anyhow, East Siders is a good project. It's hard; I talked to some artist friends that have this one style and they're good at it and I say, ‘I shot that East Siders project, and it’s fucking good, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to shoot a project as good as that ever again.’ I ask them, ‘Do you feel that way about this whole style you're doing right now? Like you're not going to be able to top it?’

TRINA: And?

GREG: It wasn't taken very nicely because they think about that. It's true. When you have something hot, are you going to be able to top it?

TRINA: You just don't know.

GREG: How much of that are you going to do? If you keep on doing the same thing over and over again, it’s not as special anymore.

TRINA: It can't be the same thing.

GREG: It's not as special.

TRINA: Do you think about the energy capturing that decisive moment? Like what's the energy that makes it so alluring for people to see?

GREG: I don't know, man. It barely happens.

TRINA: I think you do it a lot in your photos.

GREG: Maybe now with digital with a fucking motor driver shooting 10 frames a second. No, if you're shooting film, like one frame at a time, you could shoot the film and you say, ‘Oh, I got something great,’ and then you look at the film and you missed it.

You got to get the film back and look at it. Sometimes it's a little soft or sometimes there's something wrong about it. With this whole thing, the decisive moment, Henri Cartier Bresson, and he's photographing a man jumping over the puddle like a Super Mario, yes, that's nice and everything. But you know what?

TRINA: It's a candid moment.

GREG: A lot of stuff isn't really candid. A lot of stuff is set up.

TRINA: Are you saying this shit is all reality TV? It's not a conspiracy, dude.

GREG: What is it today? You got to go photograph a bunch of homeless people and bums on the street. I don't want to look at it. Oh, God. I don't want to see it. I think I want to photograph something better than that now.

TRINA: Do you have a philosophy on photography?

GREG: Philosophy on photography? It's just been a way for me to make money. It's been a living for me. It's not like a hobby. I've met artists that have had jobs. There’s a guy that's well known and famous, I never knew it, but he had a county job his whole life. When he was doing his greatest work was when he was off that job and he was doing these pictures. He had his job to support the film and all that equipment he was using. After he retired, he got a pension. He never had to worry about making a living on photography.

I have another friend, he's older and he's done it more as a career. He had day jobs all the time, and he tells me, ‘Oh, well, you should go teach.’ And I'm all, ‘Oh, yeah, what do you want me to do? Go to USC and say, hey, man, I know about photography. I'll bring my cameras in and at the chalkboard I'll teach some people how to take pictures. Is that cool with you?’ That guy was a National Geographic photographer, so he has that behind him. I don't have any of that.

*Mike Ness*, Social Distortion, San Jose, CA, 2005

TRINA: What are some of the magazines that you’ve shot for?

GREG: I didn't do Sports Illustrated or anything. I mostly would take pictures, and they get syndicated in a magazine. Right now, I started syndicating with Getty, like a lot of my old magazine work. I get monthly money from them on the syndication. I could imagine as I get older, I could upload more but I just do it as I have time. I've been making a living with photography, but then I'm barely making a living as a photographer. At one point, I just wanted to be a photographer, and there's all this specialization. Like, are you a photojournalist or you a fashion photographer or are you this or that? I guess whatever the job you have at hand, that's the kind of photographer you are.

TRINA: Like a quinceañera photographer.

GREG: Yeah, those. Wow. When you get to a certain level, if people want something to look the way I want it to look, it's not going to be cheap. It's hard because you got a bunch of kids that won't pay attention when you're trying to take pictures because they want to look at their phone. I did one for my friend, and we're trying to do the formal portraits, I had two assistants with lights. You can't get all the kids at one time to pay attention and I'm like, ‘Hey, man, you guys don't pay attention. Are you guys all failing in school?’

Some of the parents are giving me a look like, ‘What's wrong with him?’ I told the video guys, ‘You guys do this every week?’ They said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘You're fucking crazy, dude. I'm never doing this again.’ It's a hard way to work. I guess I don't have a lot of patience for some things.

TRINA: How have your shows been this summer?

GREG: I did the Art Düsseldorf in Germany. I had a solo performance with my gallerist Bene Taschen out there and we did pretty well. Three days after I got back, I had an opening here in LA for the Guerrero Gallery. It was a nice looking show.

TRINA: Yeah, it was beautiful.

Installation at Body/Soul, Guerrero Gallery, Los Angeles, 2025

Body/Soul at Guerrero Gallery, Los Angeles, 2025

GREG: I want to look at everything as a win and just looking at it, it's a win. You know, these things have to sell. People need to keep their lights on. People need to pay their help. You need to get the investment back. It's always a pressure thing and it's the same thing with self-publishing. When you have a show, whatever you don't show, you got to bring it back to your house. When you bring all this shit back to your house, as good as it looked in the gallery, you don't want it to be in your storage. It's a big crush to your ego. Everyone's saying, ‘Your show looks so good, it's so great.’ And at night, I'm just saying, fuck, man, I'm going to have to put all this shit in my storage.

TRINA: How was your trip out to London for the HIP HOP – Living a Dream exhibition? That show looked incredible, so many super iconic images.

GREG: London is expensive. You spend 200 pounds on beer and food, and you'll be better off spending 12 bucks for a burrito at King Taco and like 16 bucks for a 12 pack. Way better. You can't even compare it. Two beers in the hotel lobby were 16, 17 pounds. That's $23 for two bottles of beer!

TRINA: Ridiculous!

GREG: That's even more than Dodgers Stadium. At the stadium, they give you a 24 ounce and it's like $18. England is five bucks more than Dodger Stadium for beer.

TRINA: That is awful. What was the exhibition like?

GREG: It was in the city. It was a very nice, posh area. Posh. That's what they call it over there, posh, for everything.

We were buying gin and tonics at this gas station because they stop serving beer everywhere at like 11. This big soccer fan guy comes in, big dude, who's all, ‘What's your football team?’ And I'm like, ‘The LA Rams.’

He goes, ‘Oh, that's American football.’ I'm all, ‘Chelsea!’ And he got all happy. They gang bang on you over fucking soccer. What’s your football team, ay? I had my on my jean shirt, I didn't even show my tattoos or anything and the guy came in and got all aggressive over football.

TRINA: Soccer.

GREG: Yeah. I had some good portraits. Joseph [Rodriguez] did other kinds of pictures and Jamel [Shabazz] did some other kind of pictures, and it all came together. It was really nice.

I ask Greg what kind of camera he uses but he shakes his head at me and then responds anyway…

GREG: Who cares about what kind of camera? I just want to take pictures, no one needs to know, no one cares. I did this this video for MOCA a long time ago that shows my camera and now I see people today, they're using the same camera I used. I said, ‘Oh, they probably saw my video of me using my fucking camera.’ So, now they have my camera.

TRINA: Ridiculous.

GREG: More power to them. Good. That's a great camera. But, you know, Mamiya's not going to do shit for me. There's not a Mamiya Museum. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people that photograph with Leica’s are good photographers. But a lot of people that buy Leica’s, it's like having a Rolex or something. ‘Oh, look at me, I have a fucking Birken bag.’

TRINA: Why do you think people are so comfortable when you're taking pictures of them?

GREG: Like the East Siders project?

TRINA: Sure. Like my favorite picture, the one of that one of the kid tattooing in the bedroom, and they’re watching TV. You took it from behind the TV.

GREG: All the people in that photograph, I knew, I know personally. I still know these people.

TRINA: Photography is a different market than other fine art, how do you approach selling your prints?

GREG: I get together with my gallerist Bene and he's very strict on the edition structure. I do a 20 x 24, an edition of five, plus two artist proofs. Then that goes in line with three, 30 x 40s, and two artist prints. The whole edition structure is only 12 prints.

I said, ‘Shit, I want to do something larger because some of the prints were sold out. I would feel more comfortable having a larger edition structure.’ We've worked something out where we do a 16 x 20, 10 prints plus two [artist proofs], and then 24 x 30, six prints plus two. The whole edition structure is 20 and that's it. Once those sell out, that's it.

But there's some people in photography that start off with an edition of 30, 11 x 14’s and then they have another show, and they say, ‘I'm going to do 20, 16 x 20’s,’ but if you're really cataloging it, their edition structures start going into like 100 or more. There are some people with their greatest image ever that do an edition with another artist, a collaboration, and they do another one that’s silkscreened on wood. Before you know it, these edition structures must be really big. Depending on how much, it becomes merchandise. A lot of people now, they sell merchandise, and I don't blame them. They want to make money. It's hard making a living as a photographer. It's hard to keep on working. A lot of it's cool. People want me to make merchandise. Well, that's not what I really do, and they think I'm the crazy one, you know? Maybe I am.

TRINA: Some people make all kinds of merchandise. It's like they're constantly making something.

GREG: This is the thing that makes buyers of photography timid because when you're buying a piece of art, it's a one of one. When you're making paintings, you could do 20 paintings that kind of look like the same painting, but it's a whole series, right? But when it comes to edition structures, you could keep on reproducing it. You're not going to be able to reproduce your original painting. I think art collectors like that they have a one of a kind.

TRINA: It's exclusive.

GREG: This is why I'm in a show like Art Düsseldorf, because my edition structure is low and its fine art. Collectors want to buy something that's special. They don't want to buy something that everybody has.

There was this one photographer named David Bailey. He's real famous, he shot a lot of rock and fashion. He's an Englishman. His editions were really small, but they were super expensive. I overheard people saying, ‘If he sold this print, like an 8 x 10 or 11 x 14, he could blow out like 500 of them.’

But when you think about it, then it will no longer be special. When you look at paintings, how many Mona Lisa’s are there? There's one. You could even go into Picasso. He has a whole blue series. I was at the Guggenheim, and he has the blue series there but they're all different paintings. They're all one of a kind. Sometimes painting, I envy it, because you could be in your studio and you're doing your work. Photography, a lot of it, you've got to go out and get it. When you do commercial work, when you do fashion type work, when you're shooting for clothing companies, a lot of that's not going to be the art of photography. I do jobs for clothing, cross promotion type things, and you do it with this clothing, and it has a low rider with this location, but it's a commercial project. It's not the real deal.

TRINA: Where was your first show?

*The Sun Rises in the East*, exhibit card, 2009

GREG: My first solo show was at 01 Gallery. They had like two spaces at the Barker loft, some lofts over there in downtown by Urth Café. There was a place across the street and 01 had two spaces there. I had this show, the woman running it was Christina Ochoa, she became Chaz Bojorquez's wife. She was running Self-Help Graphics over here in East LA when it was over here, and she was doing the 01, and Chaz had a show opening on one side. It opened a week before, and then my show opened a week later. It was like Chaz Bojorquez, Greg Bojorquez, and it was called The Sun Rises in the East. That was my first solo show.

I'm very thankful for the people who put it together. It was pictures from East Siders project; it was in 2009. My first group show was in the year 2000 at a place called Fototeka in Echo Park, a little, cool spot.

I did Art Düsseldorf recently and there's not a lot of photography in that show. I have to be the only photographer from the East LA area that's ever done that. They have this thing called Paris Photo and, thanks to my gallerist, he has a lot to do with it, but I've been in Paris Photo on and off for 10 years. It's the most prestigious photo show in the world. I'm probably the only photographer from East LA. I don't have to get racial about it. I could. ‘Oh, I'm the first Chicano, Mexican American, whatever.’ I did the same thing with Photo London. These are huge international shows where people probably get to know who I am.

TRINA: That market is so different.

GREG: There are real collectors of photography. In the future, I'm probably never going to show with somebody who is not a gallery specialized in photography because if you're not a photography gallery, you don't have buyers of photography.

TRINA: Like Fahey Klein…

GREG: They’re big time. Maybe when I’m 80 years old and have a catheter. No, they have good people. They have Lauren Greenfield, she’s not that old.

TRINA: One of my funniest memories of you is when I saw you at this house party in Los Feliz, like over ten years ago. You came in the backyard, and you had C stands and set up a backdrop. You were like, alright, family pictures.

GREG: I did the photo booths before the photo booth became popular. Yeah, now everybody has that at every fucking party.

TRINA: They do.

Congrats on the LACMA collection acquisitions. What was that process like?

GREG: Curator Rebecca Morse contacted me about a studio visit, so I took down all the stuff in my house and put up my own work. She came over and saw the work. My mom made chicken and rice for lunch, and it was nice. They do a lot of visits, and they pick people that they’re going to get work from. I was one of them.

TRINA: Which two images did they acquire?

GREG: The Montebello Park picture from around 1998, and the one of Enorio on Fifth Street, 1998. It’s a portrait of him and his dog by my Cadillac. It’s pretty popular.

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