Selected Clients & Publications

  • Los Angeles Times

  • LA Times IMAGE

  • NPR

  • LAist

  • Eater LA

  • KCRW

  • PBS SoCal

  • Hyperallergic

  • Playboy

  • Curbed LA

  • James Irvine Foundation

  • University of Southern California

  • PICO California

  • Harness

  • Civic Nation

  • Color of Change

  • Target

  • The Ford / Las Fotos Project

Fellowships & Recognition

  • Eddie Adams Workshop (2022)

  • International Women's Media Foundation Fellow (Reporting Fellowship, Honduras, including Hostile Environment and First Aid Training [HEFAT])

Selected Exhibitions

  • International Center of Photography, New York

  • Grand Park Los Angeles

  • Art Share LA

  • Dual Vision: 35 Artists Under 35, Mexican Consulate of Los Angeles

I'm a bilingual documentary photographer, multimedia journalist, and producer based in Los Angeles. I've always been drawn to places that hold many worlds: neighborhoods, bars, dance floors, artists' studios, and community spaces that become home to many different people over time. My work is an attempt to understand how people create home, preserve cultural memory, and find belonging through the places they shape, and how those places, in turn, shape us.

From 2023-2025, I worked as a Visual Journalist and Photo Editor at LAist, where I photographed and edited stories across Southern California while commissioning and managing freelance photographers.

In 2017, I began This Side of Hoover, an ongoing documentary photography project documenting gentrification, resilience, and everyday life along the Silver Lake/East Hollywood border.

In 2021, I created Making Our Neighborhood, a community storytelling and public history initiative that explored East Hollywood through oral histories, documentary photography, public programs, exhibitions, a community magazine, and educational materials. That work continued with Making A Neighborhood, a newsletter I co-founded with Ali Rachel Pearl and J.T. The L.A. Storyteller, which was later profiled by Gustavo Arellano in the Los Angeles Times.

I’ve also worked in documentary film as an associate producer and researcher with Tremolo Productions, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville's production company, and on A Woman's Work: The NFL's Cheerleader Problem, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019.

I hold an M.A. in Journalism from USC, where my multimedia thesis explored the history and cultural significance of downtown Los Angeles's La Cita under the mentorship of Josh Kun. Through oral histories and archival research, I explored how one place could hold many worlds at once, continually reimagined by the communities that have gathered there across generations.

I'm an International Women's Media Foundation Fellow and attended the Eddie Adams Workshop in 2022.

I'm available for editorial assignments, documentary projects, nonprofit and commercial photography, as well as documentary research and production opportunities.

Email: samantahelou@gmail.com