I’ve been writing myself into circles for the past three weeks trying to figure out the best way to sum up this year, to reflect all that I have felt and seen and heard and won and missed. All I have come up with, concretely at least, is this phrase - “The Year of Limitations.” Limitations are a funny thing - sometimes helpful (restrictions can allow us to be wonderfully creative) and sometimes horrible (restrictions that prevent us from living life fully, or with any sense of peace or joy). All that I have experienced and witnessed this year is a direct result of limitation. Whether it was my own limitations, the limitations of others, or the limitations of the entire socioeconomic system we live in… I have tested and experienced the most amount of limitations than ever before. I still feel like I am constantly negotiating the right to be okay. To be simply average. To be neither super happy nor super upset. I’ve spent much of this year running back and forth between grief and high delight, and to be completely honest, I am tired as fuck. I’m terribly anxious about the world, about money, about the health of my friends and family. But I still feel like this is important to do - to take the time to reflect, process, and document. What else should an artist do?
Joan Didion, in her essay On Keeping a Notebook, wonders about the reasons behind why she writes down memories and thoughts. She says that the main reason was, “Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point.” I wonder as a photographer if this is also the same reason why I take photos. There’s something so beautiful and simple and complete about that notion, so I’ll choose (for now) to say that this is my intention. To remember what it was like to be me, in this year of limitations, the year 2020.
Below is a month by month break down of 2020. Please enjoy.
january
was
driving along the merrimac river for three days collecting hundreds of vintage drinking glasses for an incredible artwork by Evelyn Rydz in an exhibition called local ecologies
photographing dear artist friends in their studios (@alwazebemybb, @iglootime) and dream artist heroes at the ica (carolina caycedo, tschabalala self)
feeling hopeful for my first year of freelancing
february
was
leaving my phone & wallet behind in a lyft at 4am before a flight to managua, nicaragua
experiencing paradise at cat’s beautiful home in san juan with my love, old friends & new friends
reading for hours and hours in the sun
still processing the experience of leaving a toxic job and wondering if i made the right choice
march
was
“the beginning of the end, the rise and the fall…” lol anyone get my reference? but truly, it was the beginning of so many endings (temporary and permanent) that i had never anticipated
running around south station on march 11 with momo, trying to capture the idea of yellow peril and what it means to be asian & wearing a mask (before we understood how vital they were)
timidly entering my new studio space and missing the rest of the world
april
was
my love getting laid off from his job and falling directly into the quarantine arms of sourdough bread making
my birthday zoom call (which was strange and funny and joyful and sad all at once)
fear and unknown and not taking really any photos at all
may
was
creativity coming for me full force at the crossroads of experimentation and spirituality
learning how to create intentions based off of how i want to feel rather than shit i want to get done
durians and dear friends on video calls
june
was
processing
still processing the murder of george floyd
witnessing others’ guilty knee-jerk reactions & performative activism & useless black squares
witnessing my own guilty knee-jerk reactions & performative activism
sitting with pain, sharing pain, and holding space for the pain of others
gathering at different protests for black lives, trans lives and feeling so empowered and helpless at the same time
thinking, “here are all these people who seemingly believe in the same BLM movement, and that’s cool, but don’t we all know that this isn’t enough? are all of us non-black people going to go home and think we’re done and feel good about ourselves again?”