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QuickTake:
If you cross paths with 24-year-old David Gutierrez, perhaps downtown or near the UO campus, he may ask if he can take your photo and post it to social media, where he’s been building a following with his shots of interesting people around town.
David Gutierrez loves your look. Can he take a picture of you?
Gutierrez is a 24-year-old street photographer and barber who, since last October, has been documenting the people of Eugene in on-the-spot portraits, often taken downtown or around the University of Oregon campus.
Street photography, and accompanying TikToks and Instagram Reels documenting the encounters behind those pictures, have boomed in the era of vertical video.
What makes Gutierrez different from most social media street photographers is the streets he’s documenting. While most street photographers focus on well-trafficked spots in buzzy cities, he’s trying to build a name for his content from Eugene.
The bulk of Gutierrez’s portraits are taken downtown, with recognizable backgrounds like the Chase Bank on Willamette Street and the so-called “Barmuda Triangle.”
He’s amassed thousands of followers and views across his social media profiles. On TikTok, his posts have been liked more than 77,000 times, with his most-viewed video reaching more than 355,000 accounts.
Gutierrez is constantly on the lookout for people who could make interesting portraits — like a couple he passed in a park that both had split-dyed hair: pink and blue for him, and gray and black for her.
“I kept walking, and then I’m like, ‘I can’t let these guys leave,’” he said. “I ran back.”
Portraits, from Eugene to Tijuana and back
He bought his camera years ago — a Canon EOS Rebel T8i, an entry-level digital camera. Until last fall, it mostly sat in his room.
Gutierrez started making videos and doing street photography in earnest last October, a month after purchasing a pair of recording Ray-Ban Meta Glasses ahead of a trip to Japan, where he wanted to get videos of his friends and girlfriend without sticking a camera in their face.
Similar to the 2010s social media street photography spike inspired by the blog “Humans of New York,” the genre of walking up to someone and asking to take their photo is now a staple of social media feeds. After seeing some of those videos, Gutierrez thought: I could do that.
Ray-Ban Meta Glasses have come under fire recently. Pedestrians and service workers have complained about being unwitting participants in online content from creators who don’t disclose that their stylish eyewear doubles as a recording device. A small light in the corner of the smart glasses indicates when they’re recording, and Gutierrez said he always tells his subjects when he’s recording.
The majority of his shots are from Eugene. When asked to describe the “Eugene look” he’s encountered, he said it was a lot of dyed hair and baggy clothing.
He’s also done photo trips to Portland, and took the camera with him for street photography to Tijuana, Mexico, while visiting family over the holidays. Gutierrez, who was born in Tijuana and came to Eugene with his family around 10 or 11 years ago, said that while Tijuana had a bigger selection of interesting subjects, people weren’t that excited by an impromptu photo shoot.
“Here in Eugene, a lot of people are more open to things,” he said. “Over there, people were a little sketched out.”
Getting comfortable recording in public
Walking up to strangers with an ask can be difficult. That was the biggest hurdle for Gutierrez, who is soft-spoken and naturally shy.
He said he started coming out of his comfort zone around three years ago when he began cutting hair, a necessity when chatting with clients in close proximity.
But rolling up to a stranger, camera in hand, is a different task entirely. Typically, he’ll walk around a chosen spot for two or three hours, stopping up to six people on a busy day. He expects more foot traffic as the weather warms up, a casualty of starting an outdoor photography project in Oregon autumn.
He doesn’t go on his outings alone. He is frequently accompanied by a sibling or his girlfriend. His younger sister, 22-year-old Jessica Gutierrez, said she’s seen her brother’s confidence grow in the months since he began his photography project.
On the first few outings she tagged along on, she would see someone who could make for a good photo, but he would want to walk around the block one more time to work up the nerve to ask. Now, it’s totally different.
“When I’ve gone with him, he will go up to people and he smiles,” she said. “He wasn’t really a big, talkative person, so just socializing with people, and then getting to meet other people, I feel like that’s a big change.”
She also has a vital (depending on which sibling you ask) role for her brother: intel.
“She sees anybody that has an outfit or something like that,” he said. “She’s like, ‘David, you should have been out there.’”
A previous version of this story misstated how long Gutierrez has been cutting hair; he’s been cutting hair for three years. The story has been corrected.
