One Hundred LA Donut Shops: Theo Stroomer’s Love Letter to Donuts
Note: All photos and captions come directly from Theo’s portfolio piece, Beloved Donuts, a precursor to Theo’s art book on the same subject, available this spring.
“I saw this thing, and it was one of those head-turning moments,” award-winning photojournalist, Theo Stroomer remarked. Currently residing in Denver, Colorado with his family, Theo never would have guessed that he would be chasing donuts across Southern California until that fated February day in 2018, while making his way to the La Puente Handball Club for a friend’s wedding. He stumbled across the landmark donut destination aptly named The Donut Hole, where cars drive through two large donut rings to place their orders. After this “head-turning moment,” Theo found it impossible not to notice all the donut shops they drove past in these Los Angeles neighborhoods.
He wanted to wrap the whole thing up in a snappy 48 hours. That was February 2018. With 2020 just around the corner, Theo has since visited “over 100 shops around LA, easily.”
With a journalist hunch, Theo began his research to try to understand why donuts were prevalent in pockets of Southern California like La Puente, and so popular in America at large. He soon found surprising connections stemming from this iconic American dessert, “from immigration to architecture to gentrification and commuter culture… that was kind of the genesis of it all.”
Seeing a story starting to form, Theo organized another trip to the Los Angeles area from Denver. His plan was to steal away for a quick weekend at his friend’s place, camera in tow, and to visit and photograph a handful of shops and store owners in the area. He wanted to wrap the whole thing up in a snappy 48 hours.
That was February 2018. With 2020 just around the corner, Theo has since visited “over 100 shops around LA, easily.”
His project, Beloved Donuts, has materialized into an art book that he will sell through bookstores and donut shops themselves beginning this spring. Eventually, Theo noted, the photos of donuts and pink boxes and display shelves started to look similar, but he found that unique and powerful stories emerged from behind the counter, and with local customers and neighborhood regulars.
“This is a classic example of something we treat as quintessentially American,” Theo said. “And when you look into the history and the back story, what you discover is that it truly is a story about immigration and the American Dream. This is a story about what happens when we give people an opportunity and watch them flourish.”
At large, Theo’s photos speak to the vibrant joy and celebration that we associate with these pink boxed delicacies, a simple statement that Theo wanted to keep at the forefront of his project. “There is nothing quite like walking into a donut shop in LA,” Theo remarked, “and no matter what, knowing that you will see something that is colorful and beautiful and something that has personality.”
Yet, sprinkled throughout Theo’s irrefutably charming assortment of donut-centric photos are also photos that highlight the shop owners and shop workers — photos that tell a somewhat different story. They speak to some of the less-than-beautifully-glazed aspects often left untold: the competition, grueling hours, hot oil burns, and all the hustle involved in working and sustaining this type of business.
Many of the shop owners that Theo met with were Cambodian immigrants, and many were refugees. Many had stories worth sharing, Theo said, because they were relevant to topics in our world today just as much as they were relevant to chapters of our history.
For many Cambodian refugees that fled the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and settled in Southern California, donut shops were an opportunity for small business entrepreneurship that also tied together a network of Cambodian families who could share knowledge and financially support each other. No one could have predicted that this would have happened, Theo marveled, and it remains hard to believe that donuts could somehow have become “an outcome of something as terrible as being rejected from your country.”
As he worked on Beloved Donuts, Theo learned how many immigrant families found success in the donut business, not because it was the easiest path, but because they were the ones willing to put in the hard work.
Pointing to today’s debates over immigration, specifically restrictions coming from the current administration, Theo said that he saw documenting these stories as a way to contribute to a conversation not as a food photographer, but as a journalist. He wanted to encourage people to keep talking and thinking about how we treat immigrants in our society.
“Journalism matters,” Theo said, hinting at an underlying purpose behind Beloved Donuts. “We need intelligent conversation about the history of the day… and good journalism is a good check on powers. It’s a reality check.”
In a memo presenting Beloved Donuts, Theo refers to his project as a “love letter to the donut.” Typical of such a letter, the smile-inducing, whimsical celebrations of this iconic American pastry are easy to spot throughout Theo’s photos.
Yet, Theo also seems aware that his letter to donuts has other, more subtle meanings — meanings with different social and political clout. Theo’s photos do not gloss over the hardships faced by many who chased the American Dream by opening small businesses. Nor does Theo skirt how these opportunities are endangered today, as he considers how these stories remain relevant to continue to talk about. With Beloved Donut, Theo reminds us that we can examine traces of our country’s development through something as unsuspecting as the Southern California donut — and at its core find the hustle of the American Dream.
Theo Stroomer’s portfolio, Instagram, and of course, Beloved Donuts.
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