Born and raised in Los Angeles, the photographer Sean Maung has been documenting life in the City of Angels for more than a decade. As the son of an Irish-American mother and a Burmese father, he’s plugged into the rich immigrant history that makes the city tick.
His work delves beneath the pristine artifice of how LA is usually depicted on film, to take the viewer on a culture-hopping ride through neighborhoods, blocks, and intersections; outside corner stores where a man is dressed identically to his car, into bars where gay Latino cowboys hang out, and through the doors of clubs where women grind with hardened male exotic dancers. Through his lens he sees it all, the beauty and the chaos.
We sat down with Maung to chat about what makes LA such a vivid and impulsive city, how he captured some of his most iconic shots, and what effect the recent ICE raids have had on his hometown.
VICE: How did you became a photographer?
Sean Maung: The camera gives me accessibility; I love interaction, I love spontaneity. Even before I took up the camera, I was always down to be spontaneous with people I didn’t know, just having a human connection. The camera was that next step in creating connections with people who may come from a completely different world to me.
What’s your process when you go out shooting for the day?
In a place like LA there’s a different world in every neighborhood. I just hop on my bike or drive somewhere; I follow the vibe. I’ll go down different blocks, intersections, corner stores, anywhere where there’s movement of people. You might hit areas where there’s lots of people and interaction, but then you might hit a block where there’s only one person on the street, but that one person is super powerful. The next thing you know you’re having a very sincere one-on-one interaction with them. Just last week, I was talking to one dude and he took me to his house to show me all his pit bulls in the back, and he’s got a big ass gun in the trash can. This is the kind of shit you miss if you’re shooting quickly.
What do you love most about LA?
I love all the contradictions. People who are really from LA always have a sense of optimism. That sun brings optimism. But there’s also a lot of the city that is very cutthroat. I think that’s why noir was really popular here. When you’re living out here, there’s this element of feeling free to express yourself. I lived in New York for eight years, and it felt more strict in how you could express yourself. In LA, we’ve cut away from those strict ideas about who you are.
There’s cross pollination in all sorts of subcultures. You go to a place like Venice Beach and you realize: Damn, those are some different worlds blurring into one. You don’t have to just be a punk dude or just a skater dude, you can be everything.
I mean, where else on earth would you get a place like Skid Row? Last time I was there, there was a block or two filled with 1970s and 80s style Winnebagos with Venezuelan and Colombian families living in them. They were not your typical Skid Row drug addicts or homeless people. They were playing dominoes and kids were running around next to fires.
Speaking of fires, tell me about your flaming police car shot.
That was probably the first big organized protest after what happened to George Floyd back in 2020. It was in a very upscale, hip neighborhood of LA. If you look in the background, you can see CBS Studios. I think the organizers wanted to have this protest in a more upper-class neighborhood, to show this isn’t only gonna happen in South Central or working-class areas—it’s coming to the doorsteps of predominantly upper-middle-class white people.
As someone whose main experience of LA is via the news I read on my phone, it feels like these ICE raids and subsequent protests have really shaken the city.
Alongside photography, I have a day job where I teach English as a second language to adults. Half of my school has stopped showing up out of fear. It’s actually hard to even talk about it… This is really fucking us all up. You got people who can’t live their lives anymore. They are just going to work, if that, and then going straight home. And we can’t do anything… We can’t do anything.
I was at a store on an obscure little street recently and the guy said: “Yeah, ICE was here two hours ago, and we had to hide some of our employees.” And there is just nothing we can do. On top of that, what they did in MacArthur Park…
So this was on July 7, when around one hundred troops and federal officers descended upon a public park in a historically diverse area of LA, wearing tactical gear, riding horses, and driving in armored vehicles.
Yeah, MacArthur Park is the heart of immigrant culture, almost for the whole of the U.S.—there’s Mexicans, Central Americans, everybody just out there trying to sell things on the street. It’s a different and vibrant world. And they showed up with military vehicles and horses. What the fuck is this? I don’t even know what the right term is: Mental terrorism? Domestic intimidation? But it’s fucked up the whole city.
Was your shot of the two guys boxing in the street taken in MacArthur Park?
Yeah, in the same area. The neighborhood is technically called Westlake; it’s one of the densest neighborhoods in LA, and has a Bronx feel. I was just walking down that hill one day and they were sparring in the middle of the street.
What about the queue of men in tuxedos [at the top of the article]?
It was downtown LA and I just happened to be standing there when this group of actors walked out of a theater. I think they had been extras for a Justin Timberlake video. It was like an assembly line of handsome men, and they had these weird covers on their tuxedos so they wouldn’t get dirty.
That feels very LA to me: fantasy and reality melding together. One second there’s two men boxing in the street, the next there’s a stream of gorgeous extras in pristine suits.
It’s part of the contradiction I was telling you about. If you did a 365 of that street where I saw them, there’s nothing Hollywood about it. And then suddenly this entire production comes marching through.
What’s happening in this photo?
They’re sex workers in South Central. It’s a street called Figueroa—people just call it Fig. All day and all night you have sex workers out there. It’s a very ‘anything goes’ environment, especially later in the evening. The women usually wear colorful outfits. And there’s a lot of people trying to be rappers out there, too. It has a very negative stigma; it’s a very tough neighborhood, but there’s also a lot of energy and boisterous behavior.
On a similar note, what’s going on here?
I had been taking pictures of a female dancer and she texted saying, “Hey, I’m gonna be dancing tonight at this spot. You should come through and take photos.” So I pulled up at this comedy club in Inglewood, and the bouncer says, “You know what you’re about to get into?” And I’m like, “Yeah, of course.” When I go inside, there’s no comedy, and the entire audience is women. Next thing you know, these dudes are coming out wearing these extremely intricate custom-made outfits—one of them was wearing a puffy white jacket with a black scorpion on the back. And they start just killing it. The DJ is playing really dope, predominantly LA gangsta rap, but mixing it really well, hyping up the girls. And these dudes are hard dudes. They aren’t Chippendale dudes—they are tatted up and throwing up gang signs.
I just loved that these women had this spot to just be themselves and really get down because you don’t see that at most strip clubs. The women were really owning the space, and these hyper masculine dudes were busting out down to thongs and booty shorts. I fell in love with it. This is what I look for in LA: these weaves of contradictions.
Find more of Sean Maung’s work on Instagram @olskoolsean
The post LA Is a Paradise appeared first on VICE.
