Before Gabriella Agnotti Jones was Artsy’s 20 rising woman photojournalists to watch, she was an ambitious young photographer eager to take up space in the predominantly white photojournalism world. Since taking that leap of faith, her journey into the field has propelled her to internships at The New York Times, Tampa Bay Times, Las Vegas Review-Journal which secured her place as a former staff photographer at the Los Angeles Times. Gabriella shares that her experiences have challenged a moral reckoning within her. We spoke about the limitations of representation and why we shouldn’t solely focus on who is behind a camera, but how photojournalists today can ethically engage with socio-economic commentary.

Gabriella’s history of linking identity to her projects traces back to her childhood as a biracial woman growing up in overwhelmingly white spaces. She reflects on how something as ordinary as picking up surfing led to the most profound realization. “I grew up in Capitola Beach, California, and started surfing when I saw 11. I noticed that I never saw any surfers that looked like me. When I would go out with my friends I was the only person of color in the water. When we’d hang out at the pier, people would treat me like a tourist or other surfers would refer to me as a “kook.” In surfing lingo, kook means an amateur or wannabe surfer. I vividly recall this moment where I crossed paths with these and cross paths with these old white dudes who would scoff at me and ask, “Are you going to ride that” and I was like, “yeah, why not?” I brushed it off but I remember sitting by the beach and staring up at the water. My mom was like “aren’t you going to get in the water?” but I couldn’t convince myself to get in. The microaggressions hit a nerve and I stopped surfing since.”

“It wasn’t until a year ago when I was living in New York and it dawned on me how much I missed being by the ocean. I was talking to my boyfriend about it and he suggested that I should work on more personal projects. That’s how Black Girl Surfers came about. If you think about it, surfing as a world sport is inherently diverse. There are Black surfers all across the diaspora. The lack of diversity in the United States stems from segregation and laws that barred people from getting to the beach and learning the craft. A result of that apartheid is not seeing imagery of black surfers in all our glory.  What we get are hyper pixelated stock photos or blurry images on Facebook. I thought to myself that now is a good time to give Black women surfers their flowers by documenting them for their social media and flooding out those blurry images.”

Her project Born Homeless is one of the few examples of her ability to disrupt misinformed public opinion. Whilst most skeptics reduce homelessness to a sequence of bad life choices, the most likely age to be homeless is one. “When I was working on my Born Homeless series, I had a sincere conversation with Shameeka about my background and my biases, especially about what I don’t understand. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up on a low income. I grew up middle class in an entirely different setting by the beach. I think she realized that I wasn’t just trying to photograph her but I was genuinely interested in her story and all that she’s endured.”

“After working on the series, I was pretty wrecked emotionally. The birth of the baby uplifted me but witnessing systemic racism and seeing how much it traps families weighed me down. Coming from a privileged background, I felt guilty too. I started thinking more about how I can make more conscious choices as I photograph people.”

It wasn’t long before Gabriella found herself applying those life lessons in an unexpected turn of events as a photographer during the Black Lives Matter protests. “It was around March 27th when the protests started happening in downtown LA. No one expected it to happen and as a result, none of the editors assigned anyone from my team to cover it. It was me and a couple of my colleagues went downtown and I recall someone falling off a cop car, then the frenzy broke out. It’s sad that it wasn’t news until someone got hurt and then the domino effect of violent imagery began. After that, I realized that I don’t want to uphold the status quo by documenting violence. If a protest breaks out, of course, I’m going to do my job and document it but I want to show the nuance to this movement and underreported angles.”

“As someone who’s covered a lot of protests this year, I can honestly say that the riots in downtown LA were silly for the most part. There were kids messing around and hitting each other with mannequin arms. I took a picture of a girl who was twerking on a cop car too. It enlightened me about how photographers can contribute to sensationalized media.”

Gabrielle explains that a situation shouldn’t be newsworthy simply because it’s underpinned by violence. “I recall a lot of national news outlets using conflict photographers to cover uprisings in Minneapolis. Seeing images of these white photographers in anti-riot gear resembling cops spoke volumes about the media’s lack of care towards capturing emotional situations. Instead of using their presence to de-escalate through sensitive storytelling, it did the opposite by heightening the tension.” 

When asked about what she’d like to share with other photographers in her field, her message is both heartfelt and illuminating. “You’re not just a photographer, you’re a person. It’s important to resolve whether your allegiances lie with large corporations or with the people. You can’t put your identity aside when you’re reporting because the relationship between a photographer and the people you capture is mutually dependable. If you’re not honest about the people you photograph then your pictures are incomplete. That’s the key to creating a strong body of work.”