La Lettre de la Photographie

Because it is the holidays, La Lettre de la Photographie, a terrific online daily newsletter read by the international photographic community, asked for holiday/celebration image contributions, not necessarily just of Christmas and the New Years. Thinking over the many ways of celebration, I realized that something from the Lunar New Year, as it is celebrated in the Chinatowns of the United States and specifically, my hometown of Los Angeles with its historic and its modern always changing population of Chinese residents and immigrants, would be perfect.

I always love a competition for it forces me to review what it is I have done and perhaps, especially in a long-term project such as FINDING CHINATOWN, discover something that I captured but overlooked until now. So it is with the photograph La Lettre published in their "magazine" today: After Midnight at the Thien Hau Temple on Yale Street, 2006.
The Temple is where I always return during the Lunar New Year, arriving along with many families often around 10 pm on the New Year's Eve and awaiting the new year. When the clock changes, right after midnight, the firecrackers roar and glisten and crackle; the lion dancers' drums start up and, as they enter the temple, followers reach out to touch them, lucky talismans for renewal and new hopes.

Christmas in Chinatown, Los Angeles

For the second year, a christmas tree is up in Los Angeles' Downtown Chinatown Plaza. The tree is stunning, filled with lanterns and lights and the lighting ceremony gathered a remarkably diverse collection of elders, tourists, residents and visitors to this historic Central Plaza of the "New" Chinatown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Los_Angeles

We started the evening with dinner at one of the landmarks there, Hop Liu, a restaurant whose building has been featured in many films and where you step back into another time.

image adapted from the ChinatownVisitor Map

Then off to the Central Plaza where members of the Chinatown Business Improvement District, organizers of the event and creators of a terrific website, ChinatownLA.com, were gathering along with school children from the neighborhood (Castelar Elementary School and Solano Elementary schools).
It was a truly festive evening, a terrific start to the holidays and a perfect reminder of what it means to be in America, this amazing mix of cultures.

Tyrus at 101

It was last month that Tyrus Wong, centenarian animator, artist and kite man, turned 101. Yesterday, 26 November he was out again at the beach, flying his kites with a large attendance of family, friends and the usual amazed passersby.





In addition, two Disney photographers preparing for a significant article for the Disney magazine, DISNEY twenty-three, the quarterly publication of D23, the Disney fan club. Their February issue will feature Tyrus, one of their most fabled animators (Bambi) but concentrating this time on his kites.

A glorious day with little wind unfortunately but with clear skies and two new little kites I had never seen: a teeny insect made of tissue paper that in scale in the sky looks immense and a solitary panda, also small and light, both flown in the vain hope for some movement in the sky that would sustain them. Not much but for a moment, another delightful experience.


Notwithstanding, there was hope for at the beginning of the day, the beautiful butterfly kites flew along with a string of standard made kites that Tyrus long ago strung together.
At the end of the day, the sunset reflected off the compressed butterflies, awaiting their repackaging in the unique boxes Tyrus has adapted for kite storage, everything as always with a small personal drawing or decoration by him.

Fabrik Review By Peter Frank

I am a great admirer of the articles written and exhibits curated by Peter Frank and am honored that he just reviewed my now closed FINDING CHINATOWN exhibit at Craig Krull Gallery in the Fall (October) Fabrik Magazine, a terrific review journal and guide to the significant LA Art happenings.
http://issuu.com/fabrik/docs/fabrik14 (pg. 54)

LA TIMES/Critics Choices!

The LA Times seems to like FINDING CHINATOWN! In the 'Critics' Choices" listing in the "Arts & Books/The Guide" this Sunday. Only this week left as FINDING CHINATOWN closes at Craig Krull Gallery on Saturday, 3 September. http://www.craigkrullgallery.com/Exhibition/Current.html

FINDING CHINATOWN, Review in LA Times!

Today online and tomorrow in the print edition, Los Angeles Times art critic, Sharon Mizota, reviews my exhibition of 21 photographs from my decade-long series, FINDING CHINATOWN.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/08/art-review-sara-jane-boyers-at-craig-krull-gallery.html

A dwindling past/Moving On

Coincidentally after last week's post on the Central Valley in California, from today's (Monday, August 1, 2011) Los Angeles Times about the Fresno Chinatown, a neighborhood of historic Chinese and Japanese residence, reduced to a couple of buildings and now, one is being lost.. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-temple-20110801,0,3701986.story

A few more pics from Fresno in 2009

Sonia Mak, Founding Associate Curator of the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles and now an independent curator, was discussing this on Saturday early into the opening of my FINDING CHINATOWN exhibit. In an almost 200 year history, what IS the significance and the purpose of the various Chinatowns? Some, as LA's current Chinatown, also going through major change, were built specifically by those of Chinese origin for trade and commerce, the first time they could control their own direction after the disastrous impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Others were partially self-imposed ghettos originally for safety from anti-Asian sentiment.

Perhaps more after Sonia's and John Jung's walk-through of FINDING CHINATOWN this coming Saturday, August 6th at 5pm, organized by the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (CHSSC)

Opening Night at Craig Krull Gallery

photos by Martin Cox

It was a pretty terrific night for my opening, with people pouring out of the gallery and parking difficult to find. Wow.

I have to thank so many friends who came out, but also the media that brought others for a variety of reasons, including a lovely woman who loves to photograph in San Francisco's Chinatown and just wanted to see how I "did it." Actually a perfect reason to visit a gallery.

Putting together an exhibition, especially on a 10 year project, takes a tremendous amount of preparation and when it happens, one can step back - finally - and think about the parts. So much credit goes to my gallerist, Craig Krull, whose faith in my work carried me through and whose sense of restraint and, knowing what images to choose and where they should be placed in his space added so to FINDING CHINATOWN's sensibility. An image is a narrative and with someone in front of it or when in a configuration with other images, a conversation is held and, at times, modified. And it often takes on so much more than the thought of the photographer or artist whose creation it is.

I have known this before, in fact have spoken often to adults and youth about this when working with the contemporary art & poetry books I created and designed. It just feels so different when it is one's own work. And thus now as well, I wait, wondering what others will say and how they will feel about the narrative that I started with. We'll see.

At the moment, it is nice to just bask in the attendance and then, for a short moment without deadline, turn not only back to FINDING CHINATOWN - not through yet as a project for me- as well as others. It feels good.

Above, scenes from the opening photographed by Martin Cox and including Lita Albuquerque, a wonderful artist/performer who is in her full Stellar Axis mode posing with our mutual friend, Adrianna Kapeller; Tyrus Wong, about whom I have posted several times and who honored me last night with his presence and who is speaking about my work with me and Craig Krull, my galleriest; and then Martin himself with me.

Finding Chinatown, through Oral Histories

Scenes from LA Downtown
I know that today, the opening day of my exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery especially, should be a day that I concentrate on the show, the art and nothing else.

That said, there is that other part of me, the writer who is interested in social change that pushes through the abstraction and visceral emotion that inspires me to photograph, even when coming from my subconscious. (I published three award winning books after all - well at least two "award-winning" - that relate to social change although except for the third, my book for youth on civic & political activism, relating in the most subtle way). So it is in this connected age where I find myself this morning, googling my project name, FINDING CHINATOWN, and where the links, the raison d'etre, the "why?" I am so often asked, are bubbling up.

The first: a terrific website that I just found through the searches and one that did a short but rather perceptive post on my exhibition. The Provisions Library/Arts for Social Change. Here is the link to the review however the site itself looks fascinating and their perspective underlies a lot of my work.

The second: a July 11 article from METRO FOCUS, WNET's (New York) blog, "Finding Chinatown Through Oral Histories" a project created by the Asian American Writer's Workshop called “Open City: Blogging Urban Change,” a multimedia website that showcases personal accounts of life and neighborhood transformation in New York’s Chinatowns.

The articles, also done in collaboration with MOCA (Museum of the Chinese in America, NYC), are fascinating and revealing. I also love the following comment by Lena Sze, the organizer for Open City, for it states as well what I strongly believe: That if for no other reason (although I think there are many other reasons) what we see in the Chinatowns or for that matter many other enclaves or countries, as Americans and as global citizens, is not disconnected from we who may not be from that specific community and thus the only way that we can go forward is to be aware, considerate, interested and interactive with each other and join together for change rather than isolate or push away for destruction.

"... the organizers of Open City believe that firsthand testaments of people living in gentrifying Chinatowns are more powerful than the statistics. 'I think that even if you aren’t specifically Asian American or interested in Chinatowns, what’s happening in Manhattan Chinatown, as well as Flushing Chinatown and Sunset Park, in their own very different ways, is an example, is kind of a window on to what is happening to the New York metropolitan region as a whole.” Lena Sze

BTW, here is the link to my writer website www.sarajaneboyers.com, pretty inactive these days but that will change soon as well as my photography and my writing seem more and more to coalesce and interrelate.

Hmmm... now that I've written this, it seems like the perfect post on this, FINDING CHINATOWN's opening day.

Worker's Bedroom, Philadelphia

Opening Image

The exhibition is installed, the lighting to be finished sometime today. FINDING CHINATOWN opens tomorrow.

Hanging an exhibition is a difficult task. I have curated and know how challenging those walls can be and I am so relieved that Craig Krull, my gallerist, has such an amazing eye. Knowing his gallery, the flow, the space and most important, what he likes, Craig's choices for placement are making me form new observations about my work, liking what I see.

The best example: the opening photograph, hanging on the wall opposite the front door of the gallery, "Mannequins At Central Plaza," Los Angeles Downtown Chinatown.

Not one I would have picked for the show, Craig and Kellen Prather, Assistant Director at CKG saw this published in the

Los Angeles' Department of Cultural Affairs 2011 Asian & Pacific Islander American Heritage Month Calendar & Cultural Guide. They loved it and Craig feels it is a strong opening statement. I would previously have disagreed but now that it is up, I can see how this image plays with the mixed ideas about the "Chinatowns" for it speaks to tourism and the way in which so many view these different places in our oft-fading city centers (downtown is quiet although the Chinatown Business District is doing some terrific events to make it more active; artists and galleries have moved in and out; and the old Cantonese family shops are closing). It speaks to a history that seems also to fade however is in fact, simply adapting with the times and spreading out throughout the community. But best, it also speaks to my art and how I capture an interest in what used to be an "exotic" place and show it for what it is: all-American in its goal of providing many paths for the myriad people and cultures that make up our heritage to pass through and join together.

Yesterday, preparing a small vitrine for the exhibition, I searched in my closet for several pieces of clothing brought back in the l930's from China by my grandfather, a specialist then (I am only NOW just discovering!) in "Far Eastern" business. Among them: black silk pajamas, hand sewn and now, barely holding together. As I now view the "Mannequins" photo, taken several years ago, I find it fascinating how from the 1930's to the present, our approach and understanding of immigration to North America has changed so radically yet at the same time, vacillates between understanding and welcoming and pushing back. If the Americas would only become more aware of the strength of immigration, spoken most wonderfully some years ago by a Federal justice swearing in almost 2,000 new citizens (my friend among them) who told the new Americans, to badly paraphrase: "When you come here, you do not give up who you are or where for it is exactly that difference and experience that strengthens America, the new and the old, forming an ever stronger bond."

Getting ready for FINDING CHINATOWN: The Exhibit

With only two days to go before the opening of FINDING CHINATOWN at Craig Krull Gallery, I am aswirl with thoughts and tasks, the best of which are, of course, supplying images to various news sources who are showing interest in the project. Among those, the Bakersfield news has asked me to comment on the towns that I photographed in 2009 on a rushed swing through California's Central Valley, a group of towns I need to revisit.

With the large agricultural history, the Central Valley was itself a ground for a crop of early Chinese (and Japanese) settlers in the late 1800's who brought agricultural skills to these burgeoning farms. They built Chinatowns, often on leased land for the Chinese Exclusion Act forbid land purchase, and some still exist while others are totally gone. Gone too are many of the early Cantonese-speaking Chinese, the children off to colleges and schools and often not returning to the Central Valley. Yet, there is a strong population, often more educated new immigrants from China and Taiwan. The Chinatowns themselves, the streets in the city they were on, have in most part faded, even as the city's downtown themselves had faded. Nevertheless, there is great interest in preserving the history, some regrowth - much of it civic - and our own California history is very present there.

This was a terrific article I read before I ventured up to Bakersfield.

Kern's vibrant Chinese past comes to life

It is significant that out of the 23 images in FINDING CHINATOWN on exhibit, four of them come from California's Central Valley and the neighboring Sacramento Delta.

Ming's Café, Bakersfield

Stacked Seats, Hanford

Milk/Louie Kee Market, Fresno
Schoolhouse/Museum, Locke

Exhibition Announcement_ July 30, 2011

FINDING CHINATOWN, my decade long project photographing in the Chinatowns of the US & Canada is having its first solo exhibition, opening at Craig Krull Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica (Los Angeles) on Saturday, July 30th from 4-6 pm.
http://www.craigkrullgallery.com/Exhibition/Next.html info@craigkrullgallery.com

Also available at the gallery will be prints from my other current projects:
DETROIT: DEFINITION http://detroitdefinition.blogspot.com/
747 WING HOUSE
GRIDLOCK (which I just completed this weekend, out literally walking ON the 405! http://sarajaneboyersisaloud.blogspot.com/

FINDING CHINATOWN: The Exhibition Catalogue

Excited to announce that my exhibition catalogue for my upcoming solo exhibit, FINDING CHINATOWN, at the Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica is now available. With an introduction by Alan Rapp, former senior editor of Arts & Architecture at Chronicle Books and now Editor, Domus WebInternational!

It will be at the gallery as of today!!!!!!!! ( info@craigkrullgallery.com)

Tyrus

I started to visit the beach in Santa Monica to photograph Tyrus Wong at the suggestion of Sonia Mak, a wonderful art & community-oriented curator and former Curator of the Chinese American Museum in downtown LA.

Tyrus is now 100 and going strong into his 101st year (next birthday in October!). Retired from the world of animation, illustration and design well over 30+ years ago, Tyrus first took up fishing and then, making and flying kites, the work often related to traditional Chinese kite-making process and design. The Disney animator responsible for the look of Bambi, Tyrus' influence on mid-century and possibly culture in general is significant for a Chinese immigrant of his generation - those who came into adulthood during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Sonia tells me, as she prepares for ‘Round the Clock: Chinese American Artists Working in Los Angeles, a show she is curating in Los Angeles for the new Vincent Price Museum at East Los Angeles College and one in which I hope a photo or two of my work about Tyrus will be in, that Tyrus is one of the few artists who would not fluff over the fact that he was Chinese born, even though he arrived in Los Angeles as a young boy.

I have provided background on Tyrus several times on my SaraJaneboyersAloudBlog, most significantly on 1 January 2010, but since I continue to marvel at the draw at the beach every fourth Saturday, wanted to post a quick composite of his "retirement" here: the kites at the beach.

The artist is always present in Tyrus' kites and the man, now approaching his 101st year, continues to dominate. It is due to his art and his character that each time I venture out to the beach to visit, artists, photographers, writers, friends and family and other kite makers appear along with the always varying beachgoers of all ages who stop for a moment, look to the sky and dream.

Chinatown: Definition

I am often asked how many Chinatowns I've visited so far. I am never sure I like the count for each neighborhood/community is not something I want to "notch" on my belt. That said, it is intriguing how many enclaves throughout the United States and Canada have existed or in fact, are newly created.

"Chinatown" is loosely defined as "a neighborhood or section of a city that is inhabited chiefly by Chinese people." (Free Online Dictionary) or "an area in a large city that has many Chinese restaurants and shops and where the population is mainly Chinese" (MacMillan Dictionary)

I prefer an earlier definition I once read of "Chinatown" as a place where people of Chinese origin gather to shop and meet.

Within this context, I have photographed in the large classic urban cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Vancouver and Toronto. I have wandered through small strip malls as in Tampa, Florida where there is a Chinese/Asian market, a small restaurant, a travel store and only one or two other businesses that feed the needs of those residents there of Asian heritage. I have been in gleaming large malls such as Pacific Mall in Markham outside of Toronto or in Richmond, BC outside of Vancouver.

Often the "Chinatown" is a street of strip malls as is Spring Mountain Road in Las Vegas where a series of parking lots and the usual dull, block buildings to which small Asian architectural details are appended serve a large and still growing Chinese/Asian community - many second home residents from California - as well as serving as a major tourist destination within this city of destinations. The tourists include many mainland Chinese.

Within the strip mall, a neighborhood lies.

Within this context, I have photographed where the Chinatown is presently no more than a flooded cemetery in El Paso, TX where Chinese immigrants of another century, many with hispanic names, were segregated from the rest of the population. Or in Evanston, Wyoming, a town with two streets and one old-school Chinese restaurant but with an active archaeological dig and a beautiful and thoughtful reconstruction of a Joss House and museum to honor the many Chinese laborers who worked there on the railroads and the mines.

The first "modern-day" immigrants from China arrived on the US & Canadian shores in the mid-century 1800s, now here longer than many Western European immigrants. The Chinatowns of today are historic, archaic, run-down and lonely; vibrant and filled with residents, tourists, shoppers; or they can be amazingly modern mini-versions of Hong Kong (especially in Canada) or just simply suburban. There are Americans and Canadians of Chinese heritage who have probably never stepped into what we think of as a traditional Chinatown, so many generations away from them. There are often elders and new immigrants whose everyday lives exist solely within and there are others who are away but who return for specific foodstuffs, for conversation, to uphold the traditions of family associations or to bring their children and grandchildren to learn about a past. There are those not of Chinese or Asian heritage who come to eat, purchase and appreciate another part of their urban neighborhood. And there are the often wealthier residents from Taiwan and the mainland who have never passed through the traditional Chinatowns, but who land directly into the cultural suburbs of urban Los Angeles' San Gabriel Valley; Flushing, NY; British Columbia's Richmond (near Vancouver); or the six suburban "Chinatowns" that ring Toronto. All are part of the cultural fabric of the Americas.

In her book and blog, THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES, the author Jennifer 8. Lee tells us that in Bagdhad in recent years, American government personnel sought out the few Chinese restaurants. Why? They say, "to make us feel at home." http://www.fortunecookiechronicles.com/blog/2008/01/22/chinese-restaurants-return-to-baghdad/

The Americas have always been comprised of "ethnic" areas representing countries and cultures from which so many of us emigrated. While many have disappeared as generations weave into the general population, even today vestiges as well as vibrant communities remain: New York's "Little Italy," Dearborn's Arab-American communities, and certainly in the wealth of diverse cultures found in Los Angeles, my hometown, including the strong Armenian community in Glendale, the large Korean population on Western Ave., "Little Vietnam" in the South Bay, and the large and multicultural Chicano and hispanic communities throughout the Southern California region. Others are new and growing like Detroit's "Mexicantown," as our countries become increasingly multi-ethnic, repeating our original history and providing for new contributions and growth.

The Chinatowns however are unique in that many of them remain, whether for historic, tourist or just to maintain lives and their value for all of us is to help us understand the universals that represent so much of our own individual stories.

Joong (Cantonese)

Preparing for the show and choosing the postcard image. A snap (no pun intended), for Mr. Louie's Window has always been one of my and my gallerist's favorites. But I did not know exactly what the sign meant.

A call out to several friends, few of whom speak Chinese but with relatives or friends that might, resulted in a response from Joy Chu, an incredible art director, book designer - my designer on my teen book on civic & political activism - and lecturer (GOT STORY presently at UCSD extension). Joy's mother has always been one of my favorite resources for Chinese translation, whether for my lunar new year's greetings or in circumstances such as this.

"Joong," Joy writes, according to her mother, is the "Chinese version of the tamale...A sticky rice packet wrapped either with a banana or a lotus leaf, stuffed with either chicken,pork, beef, hard boiled egg or sweet bean paste."

This makes sense for Mr.Louie's storefront was one of many little businesses in Seattle's International District. Just before discovering his store, I had visited a totally modern noodle/fortune cookie factory where the air and light of the space was filled with white flour and where gleaming chrome machines churned out noodles and cookies, dumping them into large, printed cartons destined for the Northwest's asian markets and restaurants.


A far cry from Mr. Louie's store where, behind half empty metal shelves carrying a few Asian cooking utensils and pots, the steam emanating from a back room led me to Mr.Louie himself standing in a small kitchen where he was making what appeared to be pancakes in ancient woks, all to be then flattened, rolled and cut for the most amazing slippery noodles filled with peppers and spices. These Mr. Louie cooked each evening, to be sold the following day.


I returned several times to his shop during the Seattle trip for he allowed me to document his process, graciously and smiling for neither of us could speak in the language of the other.
It is significant that in my exhibition there will be two photographs from my encounter with Mr.Louie, one of my most memorable of the project.

First

It is approximately one month before the opening of the first solo exhibition of my longterm project, FINDING CHINATOWN, an over decade-long study photographing in and inspired by the Chinatowns of the United States & Canada (with a few European Chinatowns thrown in).

My photographic eye is strongly influenced by a lifelong passion for modern and contemporary art and I focus on the detail and often difficult beauty of the everyday. With respect to FINDING CHINATOWN, my narrative hopes to highlight a chapter of the American story, showcasing the almost two century immigration and contribution of those of Chinese descent to the fabric of this continent.

This blog is intended to complement the work in the forthcoming exhibition at Craig Krull Gallery in greater Los Angeles (Bergamot Station in Santa Monica) while looking forward to additional exhibition, perhaps with national and international traveling shows of the work and several publications.