The Perfect Exposure Gallery is closed at the moment, but owner Armando Arorizo is still putting his time and energy into photographic endeavors, documenting an empty Alhambra as residents try to slow the spread of COVID-19.

His series of photographs of local businesses in late March show the early effects of the “Stay at Home” Health Officer Order.

A busy pre-COVID-19 dinner hour has been replaced with a quiet “Safer at Home” hour for many local food retailers, as they wait for to-go or delivery orders.

Now Noodle World’s adopted Big Boy smiles alone in an unusually empty restaurant. Handwritten to-go messages are scrawled on paper and taped onto windows of restaurants like Wong Java House. Sichuan Impression’s door is blocked with a table from which you order takeout.

Main Street and Valley Boulevard are two of Alhambra’s busiest retail business streets. Valley – where The Perfect Exposure Gallery is located – and Main streets’ restaurants are the focus of this series.

In addition to owning The Perfect Exposure Gallery, Arorizo is a freelance photojournalist and commercial photographer. He is mostly self-taught. Arorizo founded The Perfect Exposure Gallery in Koreatown. But in 2018, after 24 years there, he moved the gallery to Alhambra, in to the former location of Best Custom Frames.

The gallery’s site says: “The mission of the Perfect Exposure Gallery is to present exhibits free of charge to the general public with the following goals to exemplify the rich variety and impact of photography, freedom of expression, a forum for the aesthetic, the contemptible and the sublime.”

Arorizo’s personal photographic business website is here.

The Perfect Exposure Gallery

2424 W. Valley Blvd.

Alhambra, CA 91803