By Sara Barnes on April 10, 2023

These are wonderful on-the-spot portraits of people celebrating each other.

Photographer Jason Armond arrived at Los Angeles’ Black Market Flea with a portable orange backdrop and a desire to capture striking portraits of the flea’s attendees. Armond is a staff photographer at Los Angeles Times, and the pictures were for a storyabout the event. Black Market Flea happens once a month (for most of the year) at the Beehive, an event space and hub for technology and entrepreneurship in South Los Angeles. There, Black-owned businesses sell art, clothing, jewelry, and more, and food trucks and a live DJ make the flea market feel like a party.

Armond’s portraits feature stylish Black people as they stand in front of his backdrop. Sometimes, he chooses to crop their portraits close, containing their beaming faces and energy within the orange background. In other instances, the backdrop and subject are just one portion of the larger composition, and we get a peek into the greater flea.

The photos at Black Market Flea are part of a larger project by LA Times called BEHOLD. “At its core, BEHOLD is a portrait-driven project that celebrates LA’s Black society while also providing a platform for people to speak their truth,” Armond tells My Modern Met. “For years, many Black Angelenos have felt unseen by the LA Times. The BEHOLD project is a small step in the right direction providing a space for LA’s Black community to be unapologetically Black.”[…]

More: Vibrant Energy of Business Owners Captured at Black Market Flea