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)