Keeping Love Close

“Every week my parents drive an hour and half away to visit me in Los Angeles. They stock my fridge, clean my house, do my laundry, cook meals for the week and fix anything broken. It’s important to them that I stay on track ever since I overcame a decade-long opiate addiction. I’ve spent the last two years relearning how to live, replacing all the shame I had with love and connection instead. I am so grateful to be alive, and for the love, support and hope they give me.”

“I adopted my sweet pup last September, and renamed her Mayonnaise. My entire family immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines. We didn’t grow up appreciating dogs, as they aren’t a big part of Filipino culture. A few weeks ago I received a care package from my mom packed with gifts for Mayo. It was a way of telling her, ‘Welcome to the family,’ and it made me feel so seen.”

“I met Denzel when my partner and I moved into a small duplex in North Portland. Every afternoon, the sounds of his trombone swelled from the stairwell, jazz melodies filtering between the creaky, red floorboards. It wasn’t long before we spent evenings in the backyard, talking about his past in Nevada, his present as a DACA recipient, and his dreams for a better future. Four years later, he and his wonderful wife, Aurora, are on the verge of becoming parents — by the time you read this he might very well be a father to a baby boy.”

“Seunghoi (안승회) immigrated to the U.S. for work from South Korea a few years ago. With a mounting feeling of loneliness, she called her sister Seungwon (안승원) to join her. To feel the shadow of absence from a sibling is something I have felt intimately, living thousands of miles from my brother and sister the majority of my adult life. Missing everything from the big days to the small moments, compounded over years, hurts. Yet, I know we will share space again — a powerful reminder of how lucky I am to have them in my life.”

“I feel more invisible as an Asian-American now more than ever, even as someone who strives every day with every shot and every breath to make the invisible visible and the ordinary extraordinary. I aim to protect those who cannot protect themselves. These are the microcosms of humanity. Behavioral change and softening of the heart cannot be rushed, but can be encouraged.”

“Throughout the pain that this past year and, specifically, the last few weeks have caused, I realize I have retained so much joy in little pockets of my life. The love that I receive on a daily basis from my partner and my friends is so nourishing and keeps me feeling like a whole person.”

“When I was called a ‘chink’ on multiple occasions last year, I realized that my belonging in this country was provisional at best. Whatever ‘American’ identity I had pieced together over the past three decades was utterly dismantled, leaving in its wake a crippling fear of stepping outside of my apartment. Since then, my lifeline has been the texts and emails that I have received from friends and family. These messages have lifted me up on good days, quelled my fears on low days and put me back together at a time when I questioned my very existence here in this country.”

“My kids give me hope for collective change because of how much they love life and how free they are.”

“There has been a longstanding obsession with clarity and focus in photography. In truth, only time and distance can allow insight into a particular moment, at the expense of the details that we scramble to hold onto.”

“My partner and I both have a Japanese parent and an American parent. We both spent our lives in Japan until our midteens, went to high school in the States, and ended up in New York where we met. Our parents’ love stories didn’t come as easy as ours. They had to go through the hurdles of language barriers, differences in culture and customs, and acceptance from their friends and family. I thought it was fitting to pay homage to our pioneers, and the way we inherited their language of love.”

“My parents have been married for almost 58 years. They are a quiet couple without many activities, especially during the pandemic. But they still enjoy their daily routines. Many Japanese people, especially of my parents’ generation, do not express their feelings physically, such as with hugging or holding hands. But I wanted to capture the quiet moments in their lives together, to show their way of love, and my way of love to them, through the lens.”

“I’m connecting to my lineage with my elders that are in the afterlife and those who are still alive in these images. Hearing of the tragic attacks on Asian elders and others made me want to dig into my history and find the resilience and strength within my blood. We see three generations in the embodiment of my grandmother’s presence in the altar, my father through his identification card and me in the flesh.”

“Is there anything I could do?” a friend asked me the morning after the shooting in Atlanta that killed eight people, most of whom were Asian women. I shrugged and put my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes. The last year has really simplified the way I look at life and made clear to me what truly brings me joy during an incredibly traumatic time. When the feeling is too heavy, it helps to look at myself through the eyes of the people who love me.”

“These last two months I’ve spent in my Brooklyn apartment are the first I’ve truly spent alone. Focusing on the things that I am in control of — my habits, my relationships, self talk, self love, boundaries, my mental and physical health, my environment — and standing firm in the connection to myself, my history, lineage, family and friends, are acts of radical self care that keep me grounded during hard times. When we can’t do much to change the external world, we can work hard to change our internal one.”

“Two years ago, I packed my clothes, my lover’s letter and my dream to New York City. Here is where I’ve experienced my next chapter. I made new friends. We share our dreams. We all enjoy our lives in this city but still deeply miss where we are from. These photos reflect how we keep our love close to us. Our belongings carry our memories and faith here.”

“I had hoped to wrest some profound meaning out of these photographs, but the reality is much simpler. They are just a collage of what I see and what I choose to surround myself with. All of these things in my life bring me great comfort and sustain me through times of sorrow and uncertainty.”

“I experienced a lot of violence growing up when I was caught indulging my femininity. I remember one incident where, after being found with a blanket on my head, an elder forced me into female clothing and made me stand for a picture. Since then, I’ve performed once in drag and I remember getting off the stage and into the arms of my friend Heather. She greeted me with a bouquet of flowers and a drink, and when she hugged me I could feel her pride. I keep forgetting how much it means to be affirmed by someone who looks like you, until it happens.”

“Recently it’s become increasingly hard to get out of bed. It feels like we’re being hunted for sport. This spiral is something I’ve grown familiar with over the last year, and I’ve found that the only thing that keeps me from circling the drain is the comfort of my chosen family. Each one of my friends in these pictures is holding the 20-pound weighted blanket, duvet, and bedsheet that I sleep with, because sometimes loving someone is about carrying the things they can no longer get out from under.”

“To the general population, the word powerlifting conjures thoughts of red-faced white men from the Rust Belt. While communities like that may still exist, powerlifting has become popular among Asian-Americans. The unfortunate reality is Asians are perceived as physically small, weak and fragile. Yet the goal of powerlifting is to get big, strong and resilient. There is a social currency to being an Asian person with a larger frame. I am perceived differently and less worried about harassment, whereas I am constantly concerned for my parents.”

“During the first two weeks following my father’s unexpected death last year, family, friends and those in our local Korean American community came together to organize a meal train to drop off food for us. They understood that our grief may have weighed us down to the extent of not easily being able to take care of ourselves. During our difficult time, it was a source of comfort and nourishment for us. More than that, it was a source of love — a love from a community with which we are interdependent.”

“Love looks like this to me: My cross-cultural family members’ radical embracing of one another, like making a home in a foreign land, like our unique traditions that combine southern Cajun and Thai practices, like a tray of spicy boiled crawfish, like my dad taking delicate care of his makrut lime tree used to make Panang curry, like a sack of pecans picked from my Uncle Spyder’s yard, like my Aunt Natana and her blooming azaleas in the spring, like Louisiana oaks adorned with Spanish moss and golden light, like my dad’s endless photographs from the ’70s and ’80s that we salvaged after Hurricane Katrina, like my mom and dad dancing on the back porch after 50 years of marriage, going strong.”

“This is my 97-year-old grandmother, Kim Gap Soon. I remember her telling me the story of when she crossed a large river in the middle of the night to flee south during the Korean War while pregnant with my dad and carrying her other children, praying they wouldn’t cry so they wouldn’t get shot at. She’s now living at a nursing home outside of Seoul and is suffering from dementia. When I see the senseless attacks on elders in the U.S., it breaks my heart to think that anyone would want to hurt these grandmas and grandpas who suffered so much and made so many sacrifices for us.”