Downtown LA

Photographer and educator Julia Dean has been documenting the streets of downtown Los Angeles since 2010. The ongoing project, now spanning more than a decade, represents a major shift in her career - from international documentary work to local street photography.

Dean began her career in the 1980s after earning a B.S. in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and an M.A. in journalism from the University of Nebraska. She worked as a photojournalist and documentary photographer for relief and humanitarian agencies, focusing on social issues and travel assignments across several countries.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1994, Dean continued freelance work and teaching, founding The Julia Dean Photo Workshops in 1999. The school later grew into the Los Angeles Center of Photography (LACP), a nonprofit organization that promotes photography education and community engagement.

In 2010, Dean decided to focus her camera on Los Angeles itself - particularly the streets of downtown L.A., known for their mix of cultures, constant activity, and rapid urban change. She describes this decision as a turning point: “It dawned on me that I should be photographing on the streets of Los Angeles.”

Since then, downtown Los Angeles has been her primary subject. Dean has photographed across neighborhoods including the Fashion District, Toy District, Chinatown, and around the Metro corridor. Her work documents everyday urban life - commuters, street vendors, performers, and residents - with an emphasis on candid, unposed moments.

The Downtown L.A. Project is both a personal archive and part of Dean’s broader initiative, The L.A. Project, founded in 2021. The L.A. Project functions as an umbrella for her photography, public programs, and collaborations with other photographers. It includes the Street L.A. Collective, a group focused on documenting contemporary Los Angeles, and Projecting L.A., a public exhibition series that projects street photography onto large outdoor walls across the city.

Dean describes her long-term work downtown as an effort to “tell the real story of the streets of L.A.” Her photographs form a record of how the city’s public spaces have evolved - through gentrification, social movements, and demographic shifts - over the past fifteen years.

Today, Dean continues to photograph downtown Los Angeles regularly. Her images have been featured in exhibitions at the Leica Gallery Los Angeles, LACP, and as part of community projects organized through The L.A. Project.

What began as a local experiment in 2010 has become a sustained visual study of one of America’s most complex urban environments - seen through the eyes of a photographer who has turned her adopted city into her lifelong subject.