toy camera images

reconciling lands a world apart

This collection consists of images from the United States, my forever home, as well as China, the home of my ancestors. It is by coincidence that the images I captured in China back in 2008 as a tourist happened to be in color.

Initially, the mobile gallery had all the black and white images on one side and all the color images on another. While it is an expedient and seemingly logical way to organize the images, it did not feel right to me. They shouldn’t seem so diametrically opposed as East and West are so often depicted. So I mixed them up.

When I look at the black and white images, all taken in Massachusetts, I feel a sense of familiar comfort, while the color photographs give me the sense of exciting exoticism that I feel while traveling abroad–even though Hong Kong, included in the gallery, was actually my home as a young child.

I love being American. At the same time, I can’t help but feel a sense of loss that my childhood home and the home of my ancestors are a foreign land to me.

Reflecting upon this against the backdrop of recent international politics is especially hard as I am trying to embrace all that makes up who I am.

This gallery is work in progress.