These are just a couple photographs from the collection Vanessa Avalos submitted to the archive, capturing the sunset at UCI and a Black Lives Matter protest in Santa Ana.
“An Empty Lot” May 14th, 2020
I remember taking this photo at 8 p.m. on an afternoon my boyfriend and I decided to visit an empty UC Irvine. This was the last time I stepped foot on campus. We took the elevator to the top of the Social Sciences Parking Structure and admired the sunset. I look down and see a rare sight: no cars in the lot. I remember thinking to myself how I didn’t know when I would ever go back to in person lecture, walk down to the Zot-n-Go, or browse through the Hill. I felt sad that after waiting two years for transfer, I really only had less than a year of the full college experience at UCI. You can faintly see the Target at University Town Center, where many students still go to get ShareTea or groceries from Trader Joe’s. I’m happy I got to see a beautiful sunset over Irvine that night.
“Say His Name” June 29th, 2020
I took this picture on June 29th, 2020 at around 8:00 p.m. while me and a crowd shouted “No justice, no peace” in solidarity with the black community. We had walked about an hour at this point and I remember feeling very sweaty under my mask. My friend Johana created her own little sign that says “Say His Name”. It was a very last minute project but she was happy to have something to hold up. The poster in the back says “And the trees were all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.” These are lyrics from a song called Trees by a band called Rush. The song emphasizes the need for equality in an unrestful forest—the forest being society. I remember thinking it was a very fitting lyric and one I hadn’t seen in protests before that day. We marched through blocks in Santa Ana that night, shouting peacefully for the Black Lives Matter movement. There were other nights like this but this one was most memorable because it was in the city I was born and raised in.