A photo essay on memory, care, and home — shot on an Ikon Zeiss Contaflex, Porta 400 35mm film.
My life has constantly been spent arguing and understanding how my identity challenges me. I must always fight to create a space that I can remotely call mine. As a woman, I articulate myself clearly before speaking in fear of being wrong. As a first generation student, I wonder if my efforts will ever repay and amount to the sacrifices my family have made.
But, it is in living through all this that I want to create the love I have longed for.
This collection attempts to explore the joy between the difficulty in my home and upbringing. Perhaps, it is in the past year where I have been living through a “reclamation of childhood.” I hope to show a life fully lived to the brim, and reflect the complexity of being human. I hope to have blended the traces of past, present, and future and have my photographs speak for the home I’ve graciously created. It is not perfect, but it is vibrant, open minded, and jubilant, and that is enough. Perhaps this is also a thank you to all the people that have raised me, a CELEBRATION OF HOME.
So let me show you of the places that have taught me how to learn, to live, to give, and to love till I am full. Because joy, hope, and laughter is resistance to a world's worries.
Let me first introduce to you my grandma, or 奶奶 (nai-nai), as I like to call her. She stands here, smiling in her humble kitchen. My rock, my joy, she is my everything. We have a language barrier; she speaks toishanese while I try to communicate with my broken cantonese, so we can never really say the things we want. I love history because things make sense once you understand their past--it forms their character. But, I'll never get to ask her about her parents and her parents' parents, her life back in rural China, what immigrating here to the U.S. was like, and where she got the courage to do all of this. Perhaps it'll weigh on me forever that I will never get to know 奶奶 fully. I've been taking Chinese classes though. In the meantime, she'll smile, I'll smile, and we'll find love pursued in between.
This is some cooked butternut squash grown from 奶奶's own garden. She worked on the family farm in Taishan, Guangzhou, China for her entire life up until immigrating to the U.S. nearly 30 years ago. On the farm, she tended to livestock and grew grains to sell to the town, helping her family make a living. Though we can buy the same vegetables in store now, and I'm sure it would be cheaper too, this is her way of connecting to home, her 老家 (lao jia). I'm impressed that this yearning for familiarity transcends distance, nearly 8,000 miles to be exact. And I am grateful I become connected to my ancestors in this way.
20+ year old curtains and I'm almost sure the red ornament must have been taped for nearly as long. 福 (fu) is the word on there, it directly translates to good fortune, blessing, and happiness. 福寿双全 (fu shou shuang quan): to enjoy both happiness and longevity, 感到幸福 (gan dao xing fu): to feel happy, 祈福 (qi fu): to pray for good fortune, 人生的幸福 (ren sheng de xing fu): the happiness of life, and 为人民谋幸福 (wei renmin mou xing fu): to work for the well-being of the people. I guess this is 奶奶's surefire way of bring luck into this family. You have to manifest after all, right?
A waiter rolls a metal cart of 点心 (dim sum), traditional Cantonese food, across the carpeted restaurant floor here. This is the restaurant my dad has worked at for nearly 10 years; he's been in the service industry for 25 years now. On any Sunday, if you happen to stumble here, it'll be an hour long wait before you can get seated. Located in a neighborhood of immigrants, primarily from the Canton and Fujian province that came in the 1980s, that's how much food means to our community. We will do anything to feel at home away home.
NYC is such a melting pot that in my neighborhood, you'll find Chinese, Russian, Jewish, Italian, and Hispanic communities just within a mile radius. One of my favorite things in the world is this annual street fair just 2 avenues away from me called the Feast of Santa Rosalia. I grew up on those streets; I remember going with my family before school would start in September every year. When I returned recently, I was brought back vividly to my childhood, to the rides I'd beg my mom to go on and the candied strawberries we would share. Studying urban studies has given me a profound appreciation for the community that is created in street fairs like this.
奶奶 entertained my interests in the film camera's for a bit, but she's a busy lady! The dishes are waiting for her at the sink, just to the right of the frame, where she travels off to.
I gently ruffle the foliage to see if any tomatoes have matured and I'm delighted to find a few red ones.
It was 3rd grade when I'd first discovered that Grandma, my nai-nai, was a magician. In her crafted world, nai-nai's sun-baked palms cast an engorgio spell to everything - from squash to grapes to string bean. Exposed to this magic, I knew I had to be her apprentice.
Soon enough, the garden became my home every Saturday as I channeled wingardium leviosa with a watering can. In routine, I doused magical formulas as fertilizers on every square of soft soil. To be frank, my fruits never grew as round nor ample as nai-nai's. Its leaves never lifted off the ground. However, with consistent and patient tending, I too felt the magic.
As I've grown up with nai-nai over the weekends, I've learned that gardening, or any craft for that matter, is more than wizardry. Who knows, maybe I'm not a muggle and my charms did work, but it couldn't have been done without attentive watering, trimming, and pruning. Success is the fruit of patience and persistence.
So, in Hufflepuff fashion, I water the tomatoes one more time.
Brooklyn, NYC; Shot on an Ikon Zeiss Contaflex; Ilford 400; October 2023
My late-grandfather, my ye-ye, battled dementia for the last few years of his life. If I could put feelings into words, dementia is a constant pursuit of the sand that slips between your hands ... you grasp and grasp, searching, hoping, praying for a glimpse of what was. But it seems that most days, your attempts are futile. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone. I remember this scene vividly. We had just gotten dimsum at my dad’s restaurant; it was out of practicality that ye-ye would get dimsum everyday--so my dad could watch over him while he worked. He looks at the camera here, but to be frank, I’m not sure if he knew what he was looking at anymore; did he even remember what a camera was? I imagine that when he turned back to the call of his name, he saw a granddaughter (which he would often mistake for my mom) pointing a mysterious silver box back at him.
Dementia looks differently for every person, but for ye-ye, it manifested in fixations to place, specifically his doctor’s office. So in his hand, he is carrying well-protected business cards that will lead him to Maimonides for the 10th time that week. I mention his forgetting, as hard as is to process, because ye-ye taught me the meaning of “despite.” It is despite this disease that ravaged our family, and despite his gradual unknowing of this world, that he still chose joy and happiness. Joy and happiness in the face of adversity--and if that is not strength, then I don’t know what is. Capturing this on film was particularly meaningful to me .. parallel to his memory, this film’s physical nature reminds me of the impermanence of life, and how we must always be present if we are to live it to the fullest.
This is me on film, in words, and in imagination. This is my attempt to put it all out there.
I will continue to find the sameness that builds a community between interviews to brush strokes to the shutter that fires. I will feed as I have been fed, and love as I have been loved.
It is this process of capturing that I have become fascinated with, so I will continue to create and write and paint and draw and sing, because of course, my thoughts will run just as life does.
Thank you.
With love and light, Karen Choi
NH; shot on an Ikon Zeiss Contaflex, Porta 400 October 2023 I hope to hold and live life with as much intensity as this oven light carries.