Family Album

In this project, I photograph professional Asian models working in New York, intimately with their home and family members, in contrast to their coexisting high production photographic identity that they have when they are working in a commercial setting. Printing these intimate family portraits on newsprint paper that has a conventionally commercial connotation, I want to question the tokenizing practice of having poc models in commercial campaigns, and the overly identitarian reading on poc artist's work. What do we see when we see asian models in photographs that resemble a family snapshot? and what makes an artwork political? Does the appearance of Asian bodies in an image make it inherently political? The materiality of photographs matters, as it affects how we interpret the images. Newsprint paper is mostly used for commercial or public purposes in mass media, and I wanted the materiality of the paper to echo the commercial photographic presence of my subjects being fashion models. I wanted to trick the viewers into confusion when they look at photographs that blurs the boundary between private family snapshots and commercial fashion photography. I am interested in the dissonance between the process and the outcome, such as the difference of how an image is made and how it is presented and read in the end as an object.