China Obscura is a book that collects my black and white work documenting China between 1989 and 2003. Published in 2004 by Chronicle Books
Shunde, 1990. In my father's ancestral village, an imported motorcycle bought on the black market expanded one's range getting work at distant construction sites
China Obscura. Shanghai, 1997. Construction workers build an elevated freeway
China Obscura. Taishan, 1990. After building this house in the village in the 1920s, my mother’s father left for Chicago, never to come back even once. More than 60 years later, my cousin offers food, money and rice wine to the ancestors to let them know I have returned
China Obscura. Shenzhen, 2001. This 21 year-old factory worker lost both arms in a factory accident when he fell asleep at his punch press station. Thirty-one such accidents a day happened that year in Shenzhen
China Obscura. Beijing, 1997. Documentary filmmaker screens one of his experimental videos
China Obscura. Beijing, 1992. Plainclothes policeman monitors concert by rock band Tang Dynasty
China Obscura. Shenzhen, 1999. Women wears a borrowed dress to take wedding pictures in a photography salon
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors documents students on First Robotics Competition and Science Olympiad teams as they design, study, build, practice and compete. These stories were published by NPR in 2023 and Edsurge in 2024.
Berkeley, 2023. Science Olympian competes in Chemistry Lab event
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. Berkeley, 2023. Members of Berkeley High School Team 5419 Berkelium look at a previous prototype for ideas about the new season’s robot
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. San Francisco, 2023. At Lowell High School, a 4159 CardinalBotics team lead drills a component for the prototype robot’s elevator
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. Milpitas, 2024. Members of Milpitas High School Science Olympiad Team glue together a 7 gram balsa tower they hope can support 15 kilograms of sand in a suspended bucket
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. San Jose, 2023. At the 2023 FRC Silicon Valley Regional, community-based Team 6238 Popcorn Penguins bring their robot into the playing area and ready it for competition. At the end of the day, they take home the Team Spirit Award
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. Mountain View, 2023. Mountain View High School student practices launching his airplane for competition in the Science Olympiad Flight event
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. Davis, 2023. At the Sacramento Regional, a number of robotics teams dye their hair in school colors for the tournaments, including this student from Berkeley High School Team 5419 Berkelium
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. Davis, 2023. Berkeley High School Team 5419 Berkelium’s drive and programming crew calibrate the targeting camera on their robot before a playoff match
Bay Area High School STEM Competitors. San Francisco, 2023. Mountain View High School Team 971 Spartan Robotics explode in joy the moment they know they have won the 2023 San Francisco Regional and qualified for the World First Championship in Houston
Hong Kong Under China is a portrait of once free city closing in on 25 years of Chinese rule since the 1997 handover from Great Britain, presaging the unrest and repression to follow in 2014 and 2019. Published in 2012 by National Geographic
Hong Kong, 2011. Mongkok is one of the most densely populated districts in the world
Hong Kong Under China. Hong Kong, 2011. Launch party for Chanel's new J12 Chromatic titanium ceramic luxury watch
Hong Kong Under China. Hong Kong, 2011. A former factory accountant from northeast China makes more money as a legal sex worker, enough to buy two apartments back home
Hong Kong Under China. Hong Kong, 2011. Beat-up armchairs await residents of a shantytown built on the top of a factory building. Hong Kong has the largest wealth gap of any developed nation or territory
Hong Kong Under China. Hong Kong, 2011. Artist street performance in memory the June 4,1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown victims twenty-two years previous. This young man is covered sticky notes that he has invited other artists and passers-by to inscribe with messages of protest to the China and HK governments. By 2014 the sticky note had become a staple and a symbol of HK protest
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid covered the unhoused community in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville between 2020 and 2022. Although no names are shown here, I received explicit from people in photographs to use their images, names and stories. The work was funded by a grant from the National Geographic Covid-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists.
San Francisco, 2020. Out-of-work bartender brings out supplies and donated clothing she has collected to distribute them to her neighbors living on the Tenderloin streets
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. Berkeley, 2020. Lifelong Medical Center Street Medicine Team does testing and other treatment at the Shellmound homeless encampment, where recently a positive case was discovered
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. Oakland, 2020. When her dog had a litter of puppies, this Wood Street resident became their second mother. They pile on her for comfort and love as she stands in front of the vehicle that was her father’s home until he died earlier that year
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. Oakland, 2020. Members of the United Front Against Displacement gather to successfully (but temporarily) defend a homeless encampment from being forcibly evicted by the Oakland police.
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. San Francisco, 2020. After spending an hour cleaning up the alleyway near his tent, a man washes himself with a bottle of water
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. Oakland, 2020. Rats from the Union Point homeless camp trapped by the Alameda County Vector Control Disease Study team. Rats are a major problem for the unsheltered population - carrying ticks, fleas, rabies and other diseases while contaminating food, biting people and eating holes in tents
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. Emeryville, 2021. Activist/lawyer (left) talks with unhoused resident about their lawsuit against the city to get a temporary restraining order preventing eviction of the Ashby/Shellmound freeway exit encampment by a real estate company developing the land into condominiums
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. Oakland, 2021. For the last five months, this woman has lived with two of her five children in an RV parked in East Oakland after being evicted from her apartment. She lost her job as a security guard but is now studying home-care online and is hopeful about getting permanent housing via HUD
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. San Francisco, 2022. Drug users from different parts of California are drawn to San Francisco because of high availability and low price of fentanyl here at Civic Center, within a few hundred yards of City Hall
Bay Area Shelter Crisis During Covid. Berkeley, 2022. Artist/activist installs the letters WDWG (for Where Do We Go) by the Ashby/Shellmound freeway exit, in support of the unhoused residents living there. Caltrans took them down in less than a day and most of the residents were cleared out within a few weeks
China Youth is my in-progress project documenting the post 90s single-child policy generation of young adults coming of age at a period of prosperity and globalization in a much different country from their parents’ China.
Inner Mongolia, 2019. Urban refugees roam the grasslands on their motorcycles
China Youth. Shanghai, 2018. College students dress up in traditional hanfu costume, China’s patriotic response to Japanese cosplay
China Youth. Jingdezhen, 2019. Going against decades of rural-to-urban migration flow, this pottery master left a Suzhou factory job manufacturing iPad cases to return home and make porcelain teacups
China Youth. Jinan, 2018. Instead of going to class, college seniors spend 18 hour days cramming for graduate school entrance exams at Jinan Yingcai (Talent) University. A major part of the exams requires rote memorization of political thought, including the results of past Party meetings
China Youth. Beijing, 2018. Anybody can be a star in this traditionally self-effacing society. At 18, this wanghong (internet influencer), posts livestreams and TikTok videos of himself singing, chatting and putting on makeup. He claims tens of thousands of fans, including many older men who send him “gifts.” Re: media criticism of "sissy boys” he says: “They judge masculinity by appearances rather than character and responsibility”
China Youth. Beiijng, 2019. Experimental art calligraphers perform a version of bixian (ghost pen) where only the artist in the middle knows what is to be written and physically influences the others to write it his way
China Youth. Beijing, 2019. Love In the TIme of Facial Recognition Software. Young couple spends part of the weekend visiting Tiananmen Square. Like all visitors, their every move is recorded from multiple angles by the surveillance cameras that festoon many of the lampposts
China Youth. Beijing, 2018. Smoking hobbyists run a vape shop. One common characteristic in young Chinese is the immediate desire to monetize their hobbies. Within two years of this photo, they had both moved on to 3 or 4 other ventures
China Youth. Shanghai, 2019. Lesbian couple who were open to being photographed at home, despite much of society not accepting same sex relationships. Their parents know they are together and welcome each partner to family functions
China Youth. Shanghai, 2019. Rooftoppers sneak atop tall buildings to take photos of themselves and the skyline to post on Instagram
China Youth. Shanghai, 2018. Design student babysits her boyfriend’s son during band practice
Asia’s Wildlife Trade: High demand for traditional medicines, exotic pets, and culinary delicacies drives a multibillion-dollar commerce—legal and illegal—that is emptying forests, fields, and seas. Across the region, we see the scale of the trade: traditions of consumption deeply ingrained in the culture, criminal activities that flourish in spite of the law, efforts at conservation and enforcement trying to gain footing, and the cold business of harvesting wild animals. 3 year investigation published in 2010 by National Geographic.
Sumatera, Indonesia, 2007. At a reptile skinning operation, workers daily take hundreds of blood pythons and salvator monitors brought to them by local collectors, kill them with a blow to the head, fill the carcasses with water and air, skin them and dry the skins for sale to the leather goods industry
Asia’s Wildlife Trade. Lombok, 2008. At the morning fish market on the east side of Lombok Island, boats carrying sharks unload in the morning and porters carry them on poles to the selling area. About 2/3 of the value is in the fins, which go to China for shark’s fin soup
Asia’s Wildlife Trade. Guilin, China, 2007. The Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Park, with over 400 bears and 1300 tigers in captivity, has animals perform in daily circus-style shows, where some tourists are given the opportunity to feed young tigers fresh meat. The park, with its attached distillery, is lobbying for easing of regulations on China's 13 yr old tiger trade ban, especially with regards to tiger bone wine
Asia’s Wildlife Trade. Kalimantan, Indonesia, 2008. The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation runs rehabilitation facilities for orphan orangutans in hopes of returning the primates to the wild. Among activities are "forest school," where human technicians bring infant orphan orangutans out in the trees where they can become accustomed to basic skills like swinging from branches and eating leaves
Asia’s Wildlife Trade. Hanoi, Vietnam, 2008. A sedated moon bear has bile extracted from its gall bladder. The bile which is supposed to be good for liver disease and male virility. This process takes 10-20 minutes. Then the bear is returned to its small cage to recover for the next extraction
Outskirts. Personal project looking at human encroachment and intervention in the world
Beijing, China, 2013. Grafted tree branches
Outskirts. Seoul, South Korea, 2016. The Dongdaemun Design Plaza, also called the DDP, was designed by the late Zaha Hadid and Korean architecture studio Samoo
Outskirts. San Francisco, USA, 2019. Overlooking the city from Twin Peaks
Outskirts. Beijing, China, 2017. Dust covers for a dirt road
Outskirts. Cheonan, South Korea, 2016. Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) project EveR, a lifelike female android with speech recognition, voice synthesis and gesture expression technology allowing for more sophisticated communication and interaction with humans
Outskirts. Beijing, 2013. Iron fence
Portfolio 2024