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Afonso Salcedo

@afonso.me
280 followers 359 following 655 posts

Photojournalism / Documentary / Portraits Based in Los Angeles, NPPA member hello@afonso.me · Signal on request afonso.me

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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 05/09/2026
Broke my elbow in July with an editorial shoot on the calendar. The client still held the assignment. Shot it last Sunday, twelve days into PT, two lenses, no crew. Selects delivered within the week. Three frames run in November. Editors remember who delivers when the calendar falls apart 🙏
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 27/08/2026
Six weeks after getting hit by a cyclist, physical therapy has started on the fractured elbow. Full range of motion already. No heavy lifting until October, but I’m cleared to carry a camera and easing back in. On-location work is back on the calendar in LA. Studio shoots for October most likely!
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 25/08/2026
Fourteen years at Burning Man. Fourteen drives home through the dust. Thirteen of them, I spent wondering what I'd build next year. Even if you’ve never been, I hope you find this inspiring.
fonzieland.substack.com
It Was Better Next Year
Fourteen years at Burning Man, and the question of a fifteenth.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 21/08/2026
Printed something new for our walls. Acrylic, gold float frame, and very happy with the result. Go print some of your own work this month. Or buy a print from a photographer you love. Either way, get photographs off the screen and into the room 🥰
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 19/08/2026
World Photography Day, one month into recovering from a fractured elbow. Splint off yesterday, physical therapy next, camera soon after. The time away clarified how much I love this work, and how much I want to keep documenting this city and doing portraiture work. Back on assignment soon.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 18/08/2026
Postcards from crunch time. My office stays dark most of the day. Blinds down, one thin lamp against the wall, daylight over the top edge. Everything else is monitor glow, but a unicorn duck lives under the Eizo.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 06/08/2026
Two weeks in and the hardest part of this broken elbow has been not driving anywhere or picking up a camera. The computer work hasn’t slowed down and the reading pile is shrinking, so it hasn’t been idle at least. Looking forward to getting back to the routine.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 02/08/2026
Staying home this weekend, escaping the LA heatwave and letting the broken arm heal. Reading, writing, and photographing what’s here without holding weight with my arm. Work ramps up on Hexed at Disney this week, so the balance for now is recovery, remote work, and patience until I’m back out.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 01/08/2026
In 2007, I spent three months at Pixar on a one-second shot in Ratatouille, with a dozen people across departments helping. Last week, Pixar laid off more than a hundred while Toy Story 5 surpassed a billion. I wrote about what’s actually being cut, from twenty years inside. Link below.
fonzieland.substack.com
One Second of Film
The films are working. The people who make them are being let go in the hundreds.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 29/07/2026
Getting hit by a cyclist last week left me with a fractured elbow. Three more weeks immobilized, new x-rays mid August. Already canceling client shoots, including a concert this Friday. The calendar doesn’t pause when the body does. Back as soon as I’m cleared.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 26/07/2026
While I was standing on the CicLAvia route photographing last Sunday, a cyclist ran into me from behind. Second round of X-rays caught what the first missed: fractured elbow. Arm immobilized, ortho Tuesday, shoots on hold. If your body disagrees with a clean X-ray, push for the second look. 👀
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 21/07/2026
Layoffs hit Pixar again today, around 150 people, while Toy Story 5 closes in on a billion at the box office. Hold those two facts next to each other. The artists affected are some of the finest working anywhere. I’ve been through this and I’m thinking of every one of them today.
variety.com
Pixar Bears Brunt of Disney Studio Layoffs as Company Axes Several Hundred Staffers
Pixar Animation Studios, despite riding high on the success of summer blockbuster "Toy Story 5," was hit particularly hard in a wave of corporatewide layoffs at Disney.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 20/07/2026
Shot CicLAvia on Hollywood Blvd yesterday until a cyclist ran into me mid-route. Lens and camera ships to Sony today, elbow sore, can’t fully bend or extend my arm, but X-rays clean. First photo was taken a second before the crash. Still a good morning of pictures.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 17/07/2026
Tricky releasing his best work since his debut 31 years ago was not on my cards for the year, but I couldn’t be happier to see this. On repeat. music.apple.com/us/album/dif...
music.apple.com
Different When It's Silent by Tricky on Apple Music
Album · 2026 · 14 Songs
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 16/07/2026
Update on the WeHo water main break: LADWP stopped the flow around 7 a.m. No water shortage, service stayed on and drinking water’s safe. The pipe was about 108 years old (1916), age and overnight pressure the likely cause. Sunset and eastbound Santa Monica Blvd still closed.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 16/07/2026
A water main broke overnight here in West Hollywood. Most of the water was already shut off by the time I walked down to Santa Monica Blvd, but crews had a stretch closed and silt covering the roadway. LADWP still repairing the pipe. Cause not yet confirmed.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 07/07/2026
Photographed headshots at Sony Pictures Imageworks this afternoon. Alongside a career in animation, getting hired by a studio I admired from the outside for my photography is a good feeling. Repeat client too, which is the real compliment.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 05/07/2026
Fourth of July at Hollywood Forever. A DJ warmed the lawn, then fireworks went up past the screen. LA does a summer night well. Hope yours was a good one.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 02/07/2026
Somewhere between an animation career and a photography career, I managed to pick the two industries built on rejection, approval, joy, and critique, often before lunch. Guess I like the rollercoaster. Wouldn’t trade it.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 29/06/2026
National Camera Day. The camera I trust is the one that disappears while I work, so I can stay with the person in front of me. A decade-plus on Sony Alpha got me there. Mostly though, I just feel grateful for everything a camera has carried into my life since I was a kid.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 29/06/2026
The final season of The Bear pins a still from Ratatouille above the line, “Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great.” I spent months at Pixar on that little film. Seeing it turn up here leaves me grateful and a little undone. Made me feel all the feels.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 26/06/2026
Scouted the Mt. Wilson Trail for an editorial portrait. First time on it. Location work is half the job, finding the one spot that holds the subject and the story at once. A bench near the trailhead, the whole valley behind it. This will be fun.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 25/06/2026
Lineage Fire update. Boyle Heights, this afternoon. A week into the Lineage cold storage fire, crews are still pouring water through the walls toward the last hotspots. The gutted freezer sits across from homes. LAFD says it's too dangerous to enter, and expects it fully contained by tonight.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 21/06/2026
Day four of the Lineage cold storage fire in Boyle Heights. From West Hollywood an hour ago, smoke still rising behind the downtown LA skyline, pale now where Wednesday it was black. LAFD says the smell has reached most of the city. A local emergency was declared Saturday.
A telephoto view of the downtown Los Angeles high-rise skyline beneath a heavy gray sky, with a large pale plume of smoke rising behind the towers. Palm trees and low-rise rooftops fill the foreground.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 19/06/2026
The Autry’s new show traces Los Angeles from its first people to the 2025 immigration raids. I’ve spent the past year photographing those raids and the protests around them. The history on the walls didn’t feel like the past. It felt like now. A photo essay, new on Fonzieland:
open.substack.com
The View From Tovaangar
At the Autry’s “Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles,” the founding promise of the Declaration is read from the city outward, and the present keeps interrupting the past.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 18/06/2026
This mesmerizing performance by @jamesblake is now on Apple Music, and it still makes me emotional. So grateful to have been in the audience for this. I hope one day I’m lucky enough to photograph James Blake. 💗 music.apple.com/us/music-vid...
music.apple.com
James Blake: Music Room (Live from Apple Music Studios) by James Blake on Apple Music
Music Video · 2026 · Duration 32:03
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 18/06/2026
It’s been very brutal lately. It impacts so many aspects of my work as a creative, it’s kind of hard to process mentally.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 17/06/2026
Tim Cook told the WSJ today that Apple's price increases are unavoidable, blaming memory costs. For photographers the squeeze shows up in storage. The same DRAM and NAND feeding AI data centers fills our CFexpress cards and archive drives, and high-res RAW eats both. Fun times.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 17/06/2026
At the Autry today as press for "Life, Liberty, and Los Angeles." It reads LA history as a long fight over who the founding promise actually covers, and it keeps landing on the present. Reporting and photos soon on Fonzieland.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 16/06/2026
The Last Guest of the Holloway Motel: a moving first doc from Ramiel Petros and Nicholas Freeman on Tony Powell, a Norwich City footballer who vanished in the ’80s and resurfaced managing a West Hollywood motel. A quiet study of hidden lives. Worth catching this Pride Month.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 15/06/2026
Just left an industry screening of Disclosure Day in LA. Emily Blunt is perfect, but what lingered for me was the film’s sense of wonder. The kind of imagination that reminds you why movies matter. Walked out feeling hopeful about art, curiosity, and possibility. Such a great escape from reality.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 14/06/2026
Our dog Mia is thinking about the state of the world today.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 13/06/2026
Anthropic forced to suspend all access to Claude Fable 5. www.anthropic.com/news/fable-m...
anthropic.com
Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5
The US government has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 13/06/2026
Saul Bromberger and Sandra Hoover spent seven years photographing San Francisco Pride, 1984 to 1990, as a community marched for its rights with AIDS taking hold. Decades on, those frames are how the rest of us understand that moment at all. This is the work I love.
photojournalismarchive.org
The Photojournalism Archive
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 12/06/2026
David Hockney died this week at 88. Sixty years making Los Angeles his subject. Two I keep returning to: the cool 1972 pool painting, and a loose late portrait of his mother built on raw color. He came up through photography, then spent his life proving paint could do what the camera couldn’t.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 08/06/2026
WeHo Pride parade came down Santa Monica Boulevard today. I caught it from the curb between hosting friends at home, which is the kind of parade coverage I'll take, living just off the route. A few quick frames from the street. Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 07/06/2026
Documenting the first Saturday of WeHo Pride. Santa Monica Boulevard shut to traffic, the street fair running from the entrance arch to the Celebration Stage. Worked it as a documentary set, walking end to end into golden hour. A few frames from the day.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 05/06/2026
The Photojournalism Archive cited my Fonzieland interview with Carol Guzy, this year’s World Press Photo of the Year winner. The line they pulled: the longer she stays with a story, the sharper her instinct for the next frame. Six months in NYC court corridors to earn it.
open.substack.com
Close Enough #15
Separated by ICE
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 05/06/2026
Errands in Boyle Heights turned into a walk at LA State Historic Park. Downtown right there past the grass, dogs and slow mornings all around. The detours are the best part of living here.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 02/06/2026
Happy Pride 🏳️‍🌈 I’m part of this lovely community, and this is from a studio shoot with the performer Imelda Glucose. Celebrating matters more with so much aimed at us right now. Pride is strongest when we remember to make room for everyone in it, too.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 31/05/2026
People keep asking me to unfollow Patagonia over the Pattie Gonia suit. Instead of picking a side, I read the court filings. The honest answer is messier than either camp wants. I wrote up what they actually say. open.substack.com/pub/fonziela...
open.substack.com
The Weight of a Name
Patagonia is suing Pattie Gonia. Before you pick a side, it is worth knowing what the filings actually say.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 28/05/2026
Yoko Ono is 93. Nearly every piece in her retrospective at The Broad is an instruction, unfinished until a stranger acts on it. I photographed people doing it, then left my own mark in the last room. New on Fonzieland 👇
open.substack.com
Music of the Mind
Yoko Ono is ninety-three. Her seven-decade retrospective opened at The Broad in Los Angeles on May 23. I walked it the following Tuesday as visiting press.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 27/05/2026
Two painters from Pulling Paint Murals hand-lettering the new Ministry of Coffee sign on Santa Monica Blvd this morning, building the orange mark up by hand. Brush-painted signage is getting rarer as vinyl takes over. Good to catch one going up on a Route 66 corner.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 25/05/2026
We hosted a ballots brunch this morning. Voter guides and polls on the wall, candidate platforms on post-its, friends who don’t all vote alike. California’s primary is June 2. If you’re registered, your ballot’s in your mailbox. We filled ours out and walked to City Hall to drop them in.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 19/05/2026
New modifier in the rotation, the Photek Softlighter. Tested it before a client portrait session this week. Beautiful soft light and more portable than expected. I was the only volunteer around.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 19/05/2026
I understand the pull toward detachment. With so much corruption, looking away can feel like self-preservation. I won’t. The camera stays up. June is coming fast in California. Vote. Stay informed. Help others stay informed. Bearing witness only counts if we keep showing up.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 17/05/2026
Capture One’s new beta denoising, tested on this frame at ISO 8000. Fur detail held, eye reflections clean. Impressed so far. (And the dog is patiently waiting for food.)
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 14/05/2026
Three episodes into Half Man. Gadd is writing about repression and what it does to boys taught there’s only one way to be a man. I grew up gay watching versions of Ruben everywhere. The unsettling part is how legible it still feels in a climate actively empowering it.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 12/05/2026
Carol Guzy answered questions for my new Fonzieland essay on the photograph that won her the 2026 World Press Photo, the hallway it was made in, and the narrowing of press freedom in America. Read below 👇
open.substack.com
The Hallway They Left Open
How a single corridor in Lower Manhattan became the year’s most important room in American photojournalism.
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Afonso Salcedo @afonso.me · 11/05/2026
Image Caption: Los Angeles Police Department officers in riot gear hold a line during a May Day rally near City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on May 1, 2026. (Afonso Salcedo)
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