WEST OAKLAND

I STARTED PHOTOGRAPHING WEST OAKLAND on its outermost edges because I love exploring and Oakland is my hometown. The area that first interested me visually was an old black neighborhood at the southwest edge of the city known as the “Lower Bottoms." Here, in 2008, at the height of the recession, I found a piece of Oakland that felt like a small town: grandparents playing dominoes and chess in the parks, families holding barbecues to raise money for schools and funerals, everyone greeting each other on the street. Today tech industry commuters are pricing out those old black families and that small-town feeling has mostly gone. The people I see on the street now are commuters walking to BART, and dog walkers who still do stop and talk. People greet each other now mostly in cars.