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You might say that 2024 belonged to celebrity photographer and creative director Carlos Eric Lopez.
It is hard to keep up with Lopez these days. Whether he is picking up his camera for another photo shoot with Eva Longoria or Jessica Alba, creating a new beverage for the masses (CURA LITA hit shelves in fall 2024 after a soft rollout at industry events), shooting the marketing images for the new season of Lopez vs. Lopez, or planning a gay pride event for Creative Artist Agency (CAA), Lopez knows this is his moment.
For the Mexican American Lopez, hustle and style are nothing new. He credits a lot of his zest for life from his parents. “My mom would shine bright in every single room she was in and made sure that not only was she dressed up better than anyone else, but that I also was dressed to the nines,” he explains. This has certainly carried over into adulthood for Lopez. All you need to do is take one look at his Instagram, and you will see him in the best looks for men across the board.
Lopez, who grew up as a military kid moving from city to city—Dallas-Fort Worth; Omaha, Nebraska; Istanbul, Turkey; Michoacan, Mexico—quickly learned how to adapt and navigate in each place, having to make new friends at each stop. He quickly acclimated and met people wherever he went, similar to his late mother.
He learned to turn lemons into lemonade when his parents bought him a camera so he could photograph his friends to help him remember them after they moved away. “Even as a kid, I was working with my friends and directing them on how they wanted me to remember them. Bittersweet, but it was still a form of directing which I loved,” Lopez explains. “To this day, the most important thing I know I must do when I have the camera in my hands [is] to make my subjects—the talent—feel comfortable.”
Lopez, whose calendar gets booked months in advance, must be doing something right. He’s in demand by studios, brands, and community organizations to shoot celebrity talent such as Longoria, Alba, Eugenio Derbez, and Michael Peña.
And Lopez is nowhere near stopping to catch his breath.
CAA currently signed Lopez to represent him in all areas and has been pivotal in his launch for CURA LITA, the authentic and native beverage that delivers something different yet tasty as an alternative to soft drinks for a community that historically suffers from diabetes.
CURA LITA currently comes in four “uniquely Latino” flavors and is named after his grandma on his mother’s side—he couldn’t pronounce Abuelita, so he simply called her Lita. The beverage is inspired by her love, power, and magic of being an abuela. He speaks fondly of all the women in his family who have had to navigate their lives around their husbands and make sure they were always running the household and cooking up full-blown meals every day, making tortillas and tamales by hand and creating delicious homemade dishes.
Similarly to food, music played a big part of his growing up. As a Tejano growing up in the ’90s, Selena and her celebrity showed Lopez early on what an it girl was, full of confidence and hustle. Years later in the early 2000s, he would find himself in LA entering the nightlife scene with all the young starlets at the time getting into celebrity parties, which was where he would meet a young Nicole Richie. After hitting it off instantly, the two became fast friends and Lopez soon joined Richie at all the hot spots in town.
Lopez reflects that there were not a lot of Latinos at these events, but he never felt like he wasn’t supposed to be there. He acknowledges that it was actually his upbringing in a Latino household that gave him that resilience. Whether it was his fear of a flying chancla or the thick skin he had to have as he had to put up with his tios giving him a hard time, his upbringing shaped him into the hustler he is.
“Latinos are the funniest people, and we are quick-witted and ready to take on whatever we get thrown at us,” he says. “There truly is an intelligence there to be so quick-witted, and it gave me armor that I used whenever I was in spaces that I was in where there weren’t always people that looked like me.”
For Lopez, paying tribute to the Latino culture comes in so many forms. He gave life and vibrance to an annual celebration for Día de los Muertos and honored actor and producer Gael Garcia Bernal in November 2023. Lopez lights up when he speaks of his “baby” and is hard at work on all aspects of the 2024 gala. His vision is clear, and if history is any indicator, this event will once again be a hot ticket in town. Last year’s event attracted the likes of Alba, Richie, Sasha Calle, and Al Madrigal.
Lopez speaks fondly of his mother, and it’s clear why Dia and remembering are so important to him. “She taught me how to laugh. I am able to bring her with me. Everything I have in me is because of her,” he says of his mother.
His connection to his grandma Lita is enhanced as he describes that his mom is the connector for him and Lita as the person who was given life and who gave life by and to them. He keeps his mother alive through his connection with his abuela.
“Everything about me comes from my mother and how she was. My confidence, my hustle. How to walk into a room, how to hold my head up when I am walking down the street. How to show up,” he affirms. “Those are Latinas for you. Strong and resilient.”
