Justin J. Wee

For many of Asian descent, there is good reason for love to look like worry, especially now. Our faces mark us, in the eyes of too many, as foreigners, no matter how long we’ve been in the United States. Sadly, this is nothing new. Like so many other wrongs in our society, it’s a crack that has always been present, widening under the pressure of the pandemic.

A picture can’t prove someone’s humanity — at least not to those determined to see you as other. But we don’t need our photos and stories to convince people we’re human, that we’re just like them. We don’t need to be just like them, for that matter; we don’t need to match some narrow red-white-and-blue blur of what Americanness — or humanity — meansThe group of photographers commissioned for this project are contributors to the New York Times’s Culture coverage, and are based in various cities across the country—though some were working abroad in cities such as Taipei, Osaka, and Seoul..

There is value in choosing how to be seen, in reclaiming the right to select the face you show the world, in insisting that others see you as you know yourself to be. In proudly and boldly framing ourselves in the ways of our own choosing, to say: Here I am, this is me.

These words are from an essay the author Celeste Ng wrote to introduce a series of photographs commissioned by The New York Times from Asian and Asian-American photographers on what love looks like in their lives. Envisioned as a response to the uptick in hate crimes against Asians in America, 28 photographers answered the call, responding with images that tell an intimate and complex story about their American experience.

Keeping Love Close: What Does Love Look Like? Asian And Asian-American Photographers Respond

Featuring: Various Artists

Curated by: Nakyung Han Jolie Ruben

Locations

• #Asian Voices
• #Family
• #LGBTQ+
• #Love
• #People
• #Society

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