[3][4][5] She is best known for "The Julie Project" and its related series "Family Love", which both follow an impoverished young woman from 1993 until her death in 2010.
[9] Padilla started her photography career as a photo intern at The Washington Post, then The New York Times.
After three months, NYT offered her a permanent job, but she turned it down to pursue an independent career and her own documentary projects.
[14] In the early 1990s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, Padilla followed the nurses, doctors, and social workers working at the Ambassador Hotel in San Francisco, which was housing overflow patients from nearby hospitals.
[citation needed] In 2013, she was approached to join the Facing Change Documenting America project, wherein ten photojournalists would document "poverty, housing, immigration, racism, war, economic disparity and natural disasters" in the United States, inspired by the Farm Security Administration's photography program during World War II.
[23] In 2017, her longer-term project at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota was displayed at the Visa pour l'Image festival.