Grew up as a LGBTQ+ Asian kid, I understand how difficult it is to be accepted and the coming out process is a lifelong process because of our cultural norms and traditions that emphasize duty to family and community. In many Asian countries, LGBT rights unfortunately is still outlawed and many kids and adolescences in the community are still struggling with coming out and finding their voices in society (even though Vietnam, where I am from, has made positive strides recognizing the role of LGBTQ+ community and Vietnamese are now really friendly and more welcomed to the community).

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In my work, there will be abstract photographs. The photographs themselves are really abstract; but for me, they could connect to the viewers emotionally at some levels. For that reason, I decided to add texts to some images in order to gain more emotional connections to my viewers. The story represented under the words doesn’t necessarily relate to my subject matter, each individual photograph includes a single statement which could direct the viewers to their own stories as what I hoped for. But generally, I wrote the texts inspired by my personal experience and stories that’ve been told by my Vietnamese queer friends: one was rejected by their families and has been living alone by himself for 2 years now; one is now 40 years old and she feels regretful since she would never have enough courage to come out; one is addicted with alcohol since his boyfriend passed away by suicide few years ago; one finds time to be able to heal all pain and discrimination they’ve been through, etc.

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In regard to the photographic images, they are inspired by two darkroom – based processes, Chemigram and Photogram. The light-sensitive photographic papers were exposed and developed directly under normal light. Basically, the objects (placed on papers) and the chemicals (developer and fixer) would interact with each other to shape the images abstractly. I used the 8x10 black and white photographic papers and the darkroom techniques to create the photos. However, the amount of light, chemicals, and temperature would be different in every situation (in other word, I could never get the exact same images, each individual photo is unique). As a result, the created 8x10 photographs aren’t consistent in term of tone and color (some were in black - grey tone, some were in purple - brown tone). I decided to scan the 8x10 silver gelatin prints, had them edited digitally into formal black and white representation.

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