2022 Image Equity Fellow: David López Osuna

David López Osuna is one of 20 Fellows who were awarded the inaugural Image Equity Fellowship. Learn more here.

The sterile environment of a chain restaurant is nothing like the places where California-based photographer David López Osuna grew up eating. As an undergraduate at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, he began noticing that much of the work he was seeing didn’t relate to his own experiences, or was overly influenced by commercial media.

That’s when he began photographing the fast-food industry––particularly the people behind the counter, their relationship to their communities, and their attempts for fair working conditions. “I come from a family of working-class people,” Osuna says. “I’m the first person in my family to actually pursue a career as an artist.”

What began as a project documenting corporate chains like McDonald's soon evolved into a more community-centered approach, focused on two family-owned restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area. Osuna spent months documenting their owners, patrons, and staff, using an intimate and interpersonal approach that contrasted with the sanitized worlds envisioned by corporate advertising.

Having worked as a lighting assistant for similar commercial projects, Osuna is familiar with how these consumer fictions are manufactured; his work remains focused on real people and the lives they attempt to conceal or embellish. “As an artist, I’m very concerned with the role that corporations have in the lives of working-class people,” he says.


Editorial statement by Aperture.

Explore the other 2022 Image Equity Fellows’ final projects and learn more about the Fellowship here.