Do We Even See Them? 

In this piece, I highlight the social injustice that Asian workers face in our region. We got too used to this injustice that not only did our society accept the amount of racism and discrimination that they face, our brains started filtering them out, and we stopped noticing them. We never know their names, we never know how they feel, and we’re fine with it. 

Actually, this piece is about how easy it is to take a black and white picture and pretend it’s a thought-provoking piece of art. It took me 15 minutes to take the photo, edit it, and come up with a concept. I believe that this is my worst piece of work to date, because it took no effort and had no artistic experimentation involved. Asian workers do face extreme social injustice in this entire region, and we do need to stop it. What we don’t need to do is piggyback on core issues with lazy (and overdone) photography techniques and have the audacity to call it artistic genius. If one photographer spends more time on their work because of this piece, I’ll consider it a success.