By Brandon Bocanegra, September 23, 2025
In the basement of 300 S. Thomas St. in Pomona lives the Sasse Museum of Art and the temporary home of the ongoing Out of Focus photography exhibit.
Six photographers from California conveyed their worldview and fleeting moments, ranging from skateboarding and fishing trips to protests and interpersonal relationships, preserved in photos. What brought them together, however, was their friendship with professional skateboarder Leo Romero.
“It worked out, him hyping everybody up and bringing them together,” said photographer Tim Aguilar. “It was pretty natural, just friends doing something together, and I think it turned out pretty cool.”
Aguilar organized the exhibit after his previous gallery covering the annual Swampfest Festival from 2023 and 2024 did so well. His professor from his time at Riverside City College and founder of the museum, Gene Sasse, saw that success and offered Aguilar a bigger space to invite other people.
The artists brought together include skateboarding photographer Tim Aguilar, documenting photographer Leo Romero, black and white photographer Michael Cukr, action photographer Bucky Gonzalez, portrait photographer Javier Toledo and interpersonal photographer Rhyan Santos. The exhibit’s mission statement is to inspire the viewer’s “creative impulses” and change your perspective of the world.
“The focus is each photographer’s view of the world,” Aguilar said. “A lot of the time we see things that most people don’t see. Everyone has their own vision of the world and see’s things differently.”
Santos compared seeing the world through different perspectives as “everyone speaking the same language but with different dialects.”
Santos displays the highs and lows of life through his work at Out of Focus, including a photo sequence of a car accident he experienced in 2018. He does not remember how he got a hold of his camera or how he was shooting the photos, as he had seriously injured the right side of his body, but called it “second nature” to document the experience of surviving an intense accident.
Cal Poly Pomona’s Art Department Chair Anthony Acock went into the exhibit not knowing what to expect and hoped it would not be full of hero shots he could find in a magazine. Instead, he found the exact opposite. He discovered the “in between moments” of life that deliver a “non-scripted narrative.”
“It allows you a window into those moments that are really sacred and precious to the participants that the viewer doesn’t have the privilege to,” Acock said.
Santos called the exhibit his “biggest milestone” as he is now a part of an official museum and has had the opportunity to collaborate with Aguilar, Cukr, Gonzalez, Romero, and Toledo who are prominent figures in the world of photography.
“I think it was a sign as I took a year off of touring to figure my life out and what I wanted to do was more photo-related things like this, and I feel that Leo hitting me up at the beginning of the year as I made this decision made me feel good about deciding to stay home,” Santos said.
Out of Focus will be available for viewing until Sept. 27 on weekends from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
