LOVE THY CORPORATION: ANTONIO DIAZ

Opening: Saturday, June 27 – 11:00am - 1:00pm

On View until September 2026

Civil Coffee, 120 E 8th St, Los Angeles, CA

Vernon, California, just five miles south of Downtown Los Angeles, was incorporated in 1905 as the first exclusively industrial city in the United States. It has roughly 200 residents and tens of thousands of daily workers. Its industries have contaminated surrounding working-class communities with lead, chemicals, and carcinogens, damage serious enough that the federal government has formally stepped in, placing it on a watchlist reserved for the most polluted sites in the country. Its political corruption was so thoroughgoing it became the real-world template for a fictional city in True Detective.

Love Thy Corporation is a photographic series made along the LA River as it cuts through Vernon. The landscape is strange, uncomfortable, and undeniably beautiful. It is also a place built to be forgotten by everyone except the corporations that profit from it.

Purchase Inquires

Featured Artist

A man with dark hair and fair skin, sitting at a wooden table with a glass of white wine, a small glass with a drink, and a vase with pink flowers. The man is looking to his right, wearing a white shirt and dark pants, in a cozy, well-lit restaurant with a colorful quilt hanging on the wall and wine bottles on a shelf.

Antonio Diaz

Antonio Diaz is an Emmy award–winning filmmaker and journalist whose work explores culture, identity, and history through deeply reported documentary storytelling. He is the founder of Life & Thyme, a transnational media platform recognized for its cinematic approach to food journalism and its focus on social, political, and cultural narratives across the globe.

As a director, cinematographer, and producer, Antonio has led acclaimed documentary series including The Migrant Kitchen, Broken Bread with Roy Choi, Rebel Kitchens, and Art Happens Here with John Lithgow. His work centers on people and communities often overlooked, using food not as an end in itself, but as a lens to examine migration, labor, heritage, and belonging. Alongside his filmmaking, Antonio has guest lectured at USC Annenberg and has hosted and moderated dozens of public conversations with chefs, artists, and cultural leaders.

Antonio also runs Barnyard, a creative agency and production company focused on commercial and branded content. He is the host of Unplated with Antonio Diaz, a long-form podcast featuring in-depth conversations with chefs, founders, and thinkers about the personal journeys and cultural forces that shape their work. Born and raised in Los Angeles, with roots in Mexico, his perspective is informed by the city’s cultural hybridity and its role as a global crossroad.