The Brief

In the 1980s few artists documented gang and street life in Los Angeles. Photographer Merrick Morton was one of the first to cement that era in history with his pictures of the men and women who lived it.

His first solo show, “UN-REHEARSED” at Chinatown’s Eastern Projects gallery, exhibits cholos, Black gangs, guns, drugs, police brutality and other parts of L.A. history from that period and beyond. He captures the violence but also the humanity of these communities.

“For me, the most interesting part is some of the subjects that I shot going back to the '80s have actually shown up [at the gallery] and they've come in,” he says. Others “come in to see [photos of] their family. So, to me, that's the most exciting part of it.”

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#276: Merrick Morton is one of the first people to document Chicano gang culture in L.A. He also photographed women in prison, Latinas at kickbacks, and people on death row. Almost all of his photos capture something that you might not expect: a tenderness, a realness. We meet up with Merrick at the Eastern Projects gallery in Chinatown, where an exhibit of his work titled "Un-Rehearsed" is on display, to talk about his art and how he started photographing these communities. If you want to see some examples of his work, check out this article on LAist.com. Or - come see the free show in person! It's running until May 18th.

Photographer Merrick Morton Cemented 80s Gang Culture In History

#276: Merrick Morton is one of the first people to document Chicano gang culture in L.A. He also photographed women in prison, Latinas at kickbacks, and people on death row. Almost all of his photos capture something that you might not expect: a tenderness, a realness. We meet up with Merrick at the Eastern Projects gallery in Chinatown, where an exhibit of his work titled "Un-Rehearsed" is on display, to talk about his art and how he started photographing these communities. If you want to see some examples of his work, check out this article on LAist.com. Or - come see the free show in person! It's running until May 18th.

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Documenting L.A. life

Morton is a homegrown Angeleno from the Valley, and before he began documenting cliques and gang life, he practiced photography at a state psychiatric hospital through a California grant that allowed people to interact with patients. (Some of those photos are showcased at the exhibit.)

Through his connections in his grant work, he was able to reach out to the California State Department of Corrections, which eventually led to meeting a correctional officer, Gerald Ivory, who allowed him to tag along as he visited parolees. That was Morton’s entryway to being in community with L.A. gang members and their families.

Morton took portraits of people who ran with gangs like Elm Street, Venice Locos and Florencia 13, and photographed the events they were involved in, from hangouts and family barbecues to funerals and run-ins with police officers.

Photographer Merrick Morton captured all aspects of 1980s gang and street life in L.A.

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Courtesy of Merrick Morton

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Merrick Morton captured street photography and portraits of gang members in L.A. in the 1980s and on.

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Courtesy of Merrick Morton

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Morton wasn’t the only one putting attention on this slice of the Chicano experience during this time period. There were other artists in different media who elevated the culture, groups like Asco, Carlos Almaraz, and the folks at Self Help Graphics. Morton also credits artist John Valadez — who captured pachuco culture — as someone who exposed him to Chicano culture and art and influenced his work. But still, many people in the '80s weren’t exposed to the culture at this point.

A white photographer in Black and brown communities

He and Ivory who, Morton says, had become a friend, started by visiting East and South L.A. communities, first photographing portraits of folks at the Obregon Park rec center and later gaining trust to visit them at their homes or other hang out spots. He notes the probation officer and the photog definitely got looks when they started out documenting this.

“It was sort of interesting for us, too, because he's a Black guy, I'm a white guy, and people would sort of see us on the streets, too, and say, ‘Who are you?’” he says.

But Morton, a self-described shy guy, says he never wanted to overstep. He knew how he could be perceived as a stranger, and a white man in his 30s, usually dealing with people of color who were younger than him. One of his advantages, says Morton, was it wasn’t common for folks to have a camera on them, like it is nowadays with iPhones. Many people just didn’t have photos of themselves or their homies.

Eventually, his photography of the communities lowered down walls.

Photographer Merrick Morton also captured the joy in gang communities.

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Courtesy of Merrick Morton

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In the photographs, some subjects are covered in tattoos, with stoic gazes and soft eyes. Other pictures capture youngsters hanging out — maybe experiencing some type of joy — even for a moment. There’s also a glimpse of '80s and '90s fashion choices, especially with the ladies’ bangs and signature eyeliner eyebrows.

Hollywood work

This led to other publishing work. Morton's photographs were featured in LA Weekly and Rolling Stone — again, at a time when mainstream media wasn’t reporting on the humanity of these communities. Eventually, more people began to pay attention.

His photographs caught the attention of Hollywood. Morton was tapped to work as a consultant and set photographer for movies like La Bamba,” Fight Club and Blood In, Blood Out. He’s worked on dozens of films, as well as TV sets, for more than two decades, and those photos of Brad Pitt and other actors are also in the exhibition at Eastern Projects.

One of the bigger frames at the gallery holds a black and white portrait of a young Richard Cabral, “The Mayans” actor who was previously a gang member. Cabral had come through Homeboy Industries and Morton later met him on a film set, photographing him in 2011. Both have an upcoming project that features Cabral’s poetry and Morton’s visuals, in a documentary-style view of East L.A.

Morton’s work also took him to Mexico and Cuba to document those gangs, too.

“Sometimes people will say that, ‘Hey, you're exploiting violence … there are certain images of people holding guns or drugs,’” he says, “but I think for me, it's more about creating the dialogue to talk about these things."

Keeping the images alive

It hasn’t been easy to continue publishing these historic images. Morton's had film and photography confiscated by officials before. And when social media became part of our lives, Morton gravitated to Instagram. He began publishing his photos on that platform, gaining attention once again — the good and bad. Instagram ended up taking down his account three times or deleting pictures off his feed, most times saying that his images depicted violence.

The experience has been, to say the least, frustrating for Morton. He feels that sometimes the decision to take something down seems based on race, and that white people being photographed with their guns on an account like the NRA’s get a pass, he says.

“Sometimes it seems it's racial, what [social media platforms] go after,” Morton says. “Compared to if you're white, it seems you have a little more latitude, what you can put in.”

But he’s back on Instagram, and he stays because that’s how he is able to connect with his subjects or their families years later.

A group of eight Latino young men and boys throwing up gang signs in front of a car at a park.

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Courtesy of Merrick Morton

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At the gallery, he showed me a photo on the wall of a woman from the '80s. She was dipping a cigarette into PCP (angel dust) among friends at a kickback. Then, he brings out his phone to show me another picture. It's the same woman from the photo, decades older, at his gallery show wearing a brightly colored traditional Mexican blouse and holding a sobriety chip.

Same person, different image, different life.

This might have not been the intention for Morton at the time he took her photo, but it seemed like a 180-degree moment, at least for this woman. It felt like a part of history, her history.

Merrick Morton's photography book, Clique: West Coast Portraits from the Hood, is available now and his work will be displayed at Eastern Projects until May 18. I recommend you see it. 

The Trump administration says it’s planning to freeze about $10 billion in federal support for needy families in California and four other Democrat-run states, as the president announced an investigation into unspecified fraud in California.

The plans come on the heels of the Trump administration announcing a freeze on all federal payments for child care in Minnesota, citing fraud allegations against daycare centers in the state.

The state’s Democrat governor, Tim Walz — who ran for vice president against Donald Trump’s ticket in 2024 — announced Monday he was dropping out of running for reelection. He pointed to fraud against the state, saying it’s a real issue while alleging Trump and his allies were “seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”

On Monday, the New York Post reported that the administration was expanding the funding freeze to include California and three other Democrat-led states, in addition to Minnesota. Unnamed federal officials cited “concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens,” The Post reported.

Early Tuesday, President Trump alleged that corruption in California is worse than Minnesota and announced an investigation.

“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

He did not specify what alleged fraud was being examined in the Golden State.

LAist has reached out to the White House to ask what the president’s fraud concerns are in California and to request an interview with the president.

“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said an emailed statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the federal childcare funds.

“Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office disputed Trump’s claim on social media, arguing that since taking office, the governor has blocked $125 billion in fraud and arrested “criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers.”

Criminal fraud cases in CA appear to be rare for this program

Defrauding federally funded programs is a crime — and one LAist has investigated, leading to one of the largest such criminal cases in recent years against a California elected official, which surrounded meal funds.

When it comes to the federal childcare funds that are being frozen, the dollar amount of fraud alleged in criminal cases appears to be a tiny fraction of the overall program’s spending in California.

A search of thousands of news releases by all four federal prosecutor offices in California, going back more than a decade, found a total of one criminal case where the press releases referenced childcare benefits.

That case, brought in 2023, alleged four men stole $3.7 million in federal childcare benefits through fraudulent requests to a San Diego organization that distributed the funds. All four pleaded guilty, with one defendant sentenced to 27 months in prison and others sentenced to other terms, according to authorities.

It appears to be equivalent to one one-hundredth of 1% of all the childcare funding California has received over the past decade-plus covered by the prosecution press release search.

Potential impact on California families

The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials speaking to the New York Times and New York Post.

In the largest category of funding, California receives $3.7 billion per year. The program is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

 ”It's very clear that a freeze of those funds would be very damaging to the children, families, and providers of California,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives "at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.

 ”It is a significant portion of our funds and will impact families and children and providers across the whole state,” she added. “It would be devastating, in no uncertain terms.”

About 270,000 people are served by the TANF program in L.A. County — about 200,000 of whom are children, according to the county Department of Public Social Services.

“Any pause in funding for their cash benefits – which average $1000/month - would be devastating to these families,” said DPSS chief of staff Nick Ippolito.

Ippolito said the department has a robust fraud prevention and 170-person investigations team, and takes allegations “very seriously.”

It remains to be seen whether the funding freeze will end up in court. The state, as well as major cities and counties in California, has sued to ask judges to halt funding freezes or new requirements placed by the Trump administration. L.A. city officials say they’ve had success with that, including shielding more than $600 million in federal grant funding to the city last year.

A union representing California childcare workers said the funding freeze would harm low-income families.

“These threats need to be called out for what they are: direct threats on working families of all backgrounds who rely on access to quality, affordable child care in their communities to go to work every day supporting, and growing our economy,” said Max Arias, chairperson for the Child Care Providers United, which says it represents more than 70,000 child care workers across the state who care for kids in their homes.

“Funding freezes, even when intended to be temporary, will be devastating — resulting in families losing access to care and working parents facing the devastating choice of keeping their children safe or paying their bills.”

Federal officials planned to send letters to the affected states Monday about the planned funding pauses, the New York Post reported. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, state officials said they haven’t gotten any official notification of the funding freeze plans.

“The California Department of Social Services administers child care programs that help working families afford safe, reliable care for their children — so parents can go to work, support their families, and contribute to their communities,” said a statement from California Department of Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel.

“These funds are critical for working families across California. We take fraud seriously, and CDSS has received no information from the federal government indicating any freeze, pause, or suspension of federal child care funding.”

Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.

The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of the vouchers.

With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.

“We are providing this notice nearly a year in advance because our families deserve the respect of time to prepare, but this is not a notice of resignation,” said L.A. Housing Authority President Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a news release. “We are exhausting every avenue — at the local, state and federal levels — to bridge this funding gap.”

The Housing Authority said each household using a voucher had an average of 1.58 members. That puts more than 4,000 Angelenos at risk of losing their housing later this year.

Homelessness progress could be reversed

Congress originally intended the program to continue through 2030, but last year, the Trump administration announced funding would end sooner. The program’s demise risks reversing L.A.’s reported progress at stemming the rise of homelessness.

After years of steady increases, the city has registered slight reductions in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the past two years. In 2023, the region’s homeless services authority reported 46,260 people experiencing homelessness in the city of L.A. By 2025, that number had fallen to 43,695.

The accuracy of those official counts has been questioned by local researchers, but elected officials have cheered the numbers as a sign that the tide is turning in addressing one of L.A.’s most vexing problems.

With thousands of renters now at risk of losing a key resource helping them afford the city’s high rents, sharp increases in homelessness could be on the horizon, said Mike Feuer, a senior policy advisor with the Inner City Law Center.

“They're going to fall into homelessness, and they're going to increase L.A.'s homeless population by almost 10%,” Feuer said. “Those are the implications of what the Trump administration is doing.”

Voucher holders have low incomes; many have kids

According to L.A.’s Housing Authority, about 1-in-4 voucher holders has children and 1-in-5 is elderly. And about 40% are disabled. These households have an average income of less than $14,000 per year, and they receive an average of $1,789 per month in rental subsidy while paying about $350 out of their own pockets.

The loss of federal funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers is distinct from the issues facing renters using Housing Choice Vouchers, another federally funded program often referred to as Section 8. Existing vouchers in the Section 8 program have continued to be funded, but federal funding reductions have caused city officials to cut the amount of rent new vouchers in that program can cover by 10%.

L.A. Housing Authority officials said they have dedicated staff reaching out to tenants to explore other housing resources that might keep them housed after the vouchers expire.

Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles specializing in subsidized housing, said with city and state budgets strapped, tenant advocates are not counting on California to find alternative funding sources to continue the program.

“It seems like it's a tragedy in the making,” Villagomez said. “We're preparing for the worst.”