I'd like to talk about your Photovoice Projects that you both collaborated on. First, before we get into that, I think we need to understand what Photovoice is and I'd love for both of you to talk about what Photovoice is and how you were both kind of introduced to this concept. Judy, we'll start with you.

[00:02:54] Judy: In the midst of the pandemic or the beginnings of the pandemic, some colleagues in public health and in the libraries and Asian-American cities, we decided that we wanted to do something together to help document the impact of COVID-19, specifically on Asian-American Pacific Islander communities. It was particularly pressing at the time because there were concerns about COVID-19 being labeled as the "Kung Flu," as "The China Virus," and that really aroused anti-Asian hate and acts of violence. We thought it was really important to try to document this community, Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities.

For Pacific Islanders, there were higher incidences, greater percentages of infection, and less available support in terms of healthcare. We really want to note these experiences of systemic discrimination for both communities. Our colleagues in public health introduced us to Photovoice, which is the methodology that came out of public health. It's a community participatory action research methodology. It really centers the people who are most impacted by whatever experience we're trying to document, empowering them to help document the world as they see it, to tell the stories that they wish to tell, and to center their voices and perspectives as a means towards social transformation.

One of the readings I found really interesting for me was of a Roma community or a gypsy community in, I think, Eastern Europe. That community had been targeted for trash dumping basically by the broader community. It was an indication of how little respect they had for the Roma community. The Photovoice project actually gave cameras to the youth in the community who went around and documented visually what their neighborhood turned into as a result of the trash dumping.

They created an exhibition, invited everybody in the broader community to come and see it to begin that dialogue, to see if they might be able to transform people's attitudes and behaviors. That exhibition actually was selected, I think, by the United Nations and it traveled. It seems like something somewhat simple, giving cameras to the people who might be dispossessed or marginalized, but empowering them to show us what the world looks like to them, to tell us the stories that they have, to interpret the visual representations, and that that can hopefully move minds and hearts and help us move towards social justice.

[00:05:50] Host: Yes. I was reading through your documents and this concept of not being the spectator but actually photographing your own experience really kind of changes how things-- how we have archived, whether it's marginalized communities or any aspect of our history. Julia, how did you-- what were your thoughts when you were introduced to this concept of Photovoice?

[00:06:25] Julia: I was first introduced to this project by Dr. Thuy Vo Dang. She let me know that Judy, Dr. Sora Park Tanjasiri, and Cevadne Lee had been granted funding to pursue this year-long project to invite student researchers and community-based partner organizations to come together to learn about the methodology of Photovoice.

Our project had initially shifted where students at first were tasked to document their communities, but instead, they were also documenting their own experiences of now living at home, sometimes in these multi-generational households, navigating virtual schooling, being caretakers for younger siblings, and also, navigating what it means to be Asian-American Pacific Islander during this time of hate.

What really drew me to this project was just-- it indicated to me the power that photography has. As I mentioned, I am an artist. I have an educational background in photography, preservation, and collections management, and I've witnessed firsthand how alienating it could be for not having your histories be visually represented in archives. We know how much power that an image can hold, that saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words," and how powerful it is for this community to document themselves to be seen the way that they want to be seen, especially as we remind folks that during the pandemic, images of Asian men and women wearing masks were sometimes the headline image of a news article reporting on COVID-19 and images of Chinatown when it wasn't relevant at all to what Judy was saying earlier how that just perpetuated this very dangerous stereotype and we saw those consequences of that framing of our communities being the scapegoat of the Kung Flu virus.

Oh, I did want to also mention, I was brought on during this project being a fairly recent graduate myself, as well as Phuc To, who was also our project consultant and a recent graduate of UCI. There were multiple forms of care and teaching. Not only did we have this cohort of undergraduate students learn about the power of Photovoice, learn about the importance of archiving and being co-creators, and creating their own historical records, as you mentioned.

This was a unique moment in time. We're documenting during the first year of lockdown of COVID-19 and how they're navigating this but for Phuc and I, we're also learning how to hold community space, hold collaborative space, and how to do that online through a sense of care. We're learning from our mentors like Judy, like Thuy, like Sora, and Cevadne of how to save and be flexible with project outcomes, responding to everything that was happening. We were talking about the elections. We're talking about the--

[00:09:42] Host: The Black Lives Matter. Yes.

[00:09:43] Julia: The Black Lives Matter Movement, what happened on January 6th, the Atlanta shooting, how that impacted the community, and how that impacted our students. Throughout the project, yes, students are responding to the impact of COVID-19 on Asian-American Pacific Islander community, but we're also, collectively, we're responding to all of these very pressing events and issues that were happening at the same time, so--

[00:10:10] Host: You're doing this all virtually?

[00:10:12] Julia: We're doing it all virtually, which helped us remain flexible and that really helped us be more mindful as well as to the capacity of our community-based organizations and our partners. If this was in person, it might have been a lot harder to schedule it in when we could meet.

Having that flexibility online meant that we could also break out into smaller Zoom breakout sessions for students to chat with their community mentors. It also helped us be able to share the project with a wider audience. We were able to use social media. The students created a project Instagram page. We shared a Facebook Live of the student exhibition through the website that they created. The project was able to exist in multiple formats in its way, in its own way be archived online through the website.

[00:11:13] Judy: Jon-Barrett, I think you were also asking us what are the-- what's the power of having subjects record their own lives. I think in academia, there's often the presumption that scholars have more knowledge, that they have the expertise, that they have the overview, that they can go in and understand a community and study it. That could perpetuate certain power dynamics in which the scholar knows more and might even be utilitarian in the way that they're treating the community.

I think this is why Photovoice is so powerful because it flips that relationship. It's the people who are studying their own lives, [chuckles] and they're sharing their perspectives.

In the case of our students, we both wanted them to record their own experiences, but we also wanted to give them insight in case they didn't initially have a connection to other Asian-American Pacific Islander communities. That's why we thought it was so important to involve community-based organizations so that the representatives of those organizations can share what are they seeing for people who may have difficulty accessing healthcare, whether they seeing in terms of people who might be facing economic hardships.

It's not that our students are immune to that, our students are experiencing that as well, but it just gave them additional insights as to what else was happening within the Asian-American Pacific Islander community.

[00:12:43] Host: Well, and it's interesting, too, because, I mean, we are constantly documenting. Everybody has-- pretty much everyone has a phone available to them and we're utilizing it on the regular basis. What was the change that was required of students from just taking their normal pictures to actually being more conscious about what they were documenting?

[00:13:11] Judy: Yes. I want to invite Julia just talk more about the SHOWeD method, because I think that's really at the heart of Photovoice because it's not just about taking photographs, but really going deeply into thinking about what are the implications of those as photographs.

I'll just add one more thing, which is that we talked and we shared about what the photographs meant, both for the people who are taking the photographs, but also for the people who are viewing them, and what are the details that came across to them.

That type of workshopping and dialogue both created these incredibly strong bonds between the people who are creating the photographs. It also became the basis for creating virtual and physical exhibitions so that we could talk in greater detail, in greater depth, and hopefully, reach people who are not familiar with the setting to explain why these photographs are so important. Julia, please, talk more about the showed method.

[00:14:07] Julia: Yes. I just wanted to touch on the fact that this was a virtual Photovoice Project. We couldn't do what traditional in-person projects offered, which was providing students with cameras. We had to be a little creative in terms of what the students could access, whether they had a phone, using their iPad. We encouraged them to visit past photographs that they might have taken, scanning personal photographs if they had access to a scanner, taking screenshots, and then, making note of where those screenshots are coming from.

We emphasized the importance of informed consent, so walking the students through what it means to first approach someone if you want to take their photograph and letting them know where this photo might end up. They knew at the beginning of the project that we had the intention of their records being donated to the Orange County Southeast Asian Archive in the feature, so ensuring that they have this conversation with the person.

We've also worked around more creative methods of taking photographs of people where they're maybe not showing their face, or perhaps it's their hands from above, or their feets, or the shadow of someone, or someone turning away from the camera just to keep that privacy.

It was really stressed the importance of communicating when you're taking a photograph of someone. We also didn't want anyone to go outside and take photos out in the public because there were still those lockdown measures. We really prioritize their safety as well. That's why we incorporated those other forms of photography or collaging digitally. We really left it out in the open for them in terms of how are they wanted to interpret making an image.

As Judy had mentioned for their SHOWeD description, doing these preliminary discussions in the groups, and then, again, with their community-based mentor, hearing how students reacted to each other's photographs, what they initially felt was important, or how they also related to each other's stories through what do they see here, how does it make you feel, what is the description, what is the impact.

Using this kind of method of the SHOWeD description helped students be able to also write a detailed description of the photograph that was also included in the records that they donated to the archive. This would help future researchers, future students looking back from 2020 to 2021, not just looking at the images, but here, we also have firsthand account of the person that created their record, detailing what it is that they want to share with the world.

[00:17:03] Host: Yes. I was going to ask how important context is to the actual photographic image. I appreciate you kind of preemptively answering that question. It's not about professional photography. I mean, these aren't photography students. It's just about the actual captured image, not necessarily the quality of the captured image.

[00:17:31] Judy: There was definitely a range of skills. There were some students who had a lot of experience in photography and others who didn't. I think it's the emotional impact of the images that really stay with me. One of the images is of a hospital bed, but in a hall. You think about, "Well, who is the person who needs that care? Why is that particular type of bed in somebody's living room? What are the implications of the care that the family is providing for that individual?"

Another really beautiful image is of a-- kind of older wizened hand making, I think, dosas. You think about multiple generations being under one roof and sharing that cultural culinary knowledge and that perhaps if we weren't all stuck [chuckles] in one place, would that have happened? That expression of care that is achieved through the simple sharing of food.

[00:18:32] Host: Yes. I mean, even outside, just looking at the general experience, the ways that we were able to find connection during that time of lockdown, the ways that we're able to find entertainment of value when we weren't going to work. I mean, there are so many photos. I'm sure just the aggregate of it all will be historian's dream years from now.

[00:19:04] Judy: I actually discovered photography during the pandemic. I just wanted to do something that I did initially already have a skill for. I think the process of slowing down and looking for something that's beautiful or that's interesting, really just even personally helps to sustain me during that time period.

[00:19:27] Host: Both of you kind of came from a place of curation and archive in your work as far as I've seen in my research. Judy, I've watched your educational videos that are this beautiful balance of your own personal photographs and historical photos and other journalistic photos. I'd love-- Coming from that role of archiving other people's work or historical work to archiving things that are taken of the moment, what the difference of that experience is for both of you?

[00:20:09] Judy: That's really interesting. I do find historic photographs to be so powerful. My first book is a biography of a Chinese-American physician. I think she was the first one who was born in the United States and that was a female doctor. One of the things I found really interesting about her is that she never married and didn't have children, which is not that unusual for professional women around the turn of the century, early 20th century, because they have the professional means, the financial means to be independent.

I found these images of her partially cross-dressing, slicking back hair, wearing dark-brown glasses. In one of her photographs, she even signed her name as Mike rather than Margaret. I felt like it was something about her self-expression that she enjoyed certain forms of general presentations and playing around with them. I think discovering that photograph was just so powerful to me and opened up lines of inquiry, which I thought might be there, but became more confirmed when I saw the visual evidence. I just find that to be really fascinating.

In terms of what's happening now, I think because I was trying to learn photography, I became even more aware of framing. If you take a shot from a particular angle, it tells a certain story. If you have a wider expanse or wider canvas, then it's a different story, or if you zoom in. Each of those choices give us different insight about that experience or that individual. Because it's documenting the now, I have much more agency in making that decision as opposed to discovering something in the past and trying to think about what that visual image might say about the individual or the group or the experience.

[00:22:06] Host: Julia?

[00:22:06] Julia: I've been freelancing as an archival researcher, helping with a documentary about the Vietnamese diaspora. When it comes to trying to access records about a community that is so heavily documented in terms of their refugee experience, but then, having to go through licensing and the multiple barriers there is to that, to just be able to tell your story using these historical records.

I think about the importance of now. I try to encourage everyone to start documenting, start collecting. If you are going to rallies, having those conversations with folks at protests, if it's okay that you take a photo of their poster, or making sure to crop their faces out for any safety issues, and to not get too bogged down with the, "Well, how do I name the file? Where should I store it? Who should I donate it to?"

I actually just had a conversation with a student not too long ago where I just encouraged them to just start from a bigger pile of things to collect, and you can determine with your community collaborators or mentors or elders what's important later on. It's better to have a larger pile than working from something that doesn't exist.

I can only hope that the more our communities document and preserve our history, the more future generations can have access to these and hopefully a lot less hurdles and barriers compared to traditional institutionalized spaces that hold these records because it gets really disheartening when you're told that using three seconds of something could be thousands and thousands of dollars when certainly, the person being photographed or in the video has no idea, probably didn't consent to that.

[00:24:04] Host: I'm curious what the student archivists during this project, what their experience was. What feedback did they give about what they went through during this project?

[00:24:17] Julia: Sure. We did have one student reflect on the importance of creating a record. They didn't quite understand the historical significance of what it meant for them to go through that process of choosing a photograph, writing the description, and deciding which one they wanted to donate into the archive until towards the end of the project of how meaningful that meant to them and knowing that they were going to make-- that they were leaving a mark in this world through this project.

We've also had students continue the Photovoice Project through oral history. They're continuing to create those records through an audio format. We also, through another grant, Judy and Phuc had interviewed student researchers asking them firsthand what their experiences were like being a part of this project. Those videos, as many records and archives themselves of the project, also exist on YouTube. I'll pass it over to Judy.

[00:25:22] Judy: I guess two things. One, when we did the video interviews with the students, it just reaffirmed to me how much the project meant to them because they were suffering. The world stopped. Their experiences of being a student was getting on Zoom. Sometimes, they were taking large lecture classes. It was just black space with very little contact. The fact that we were able to create a much more intimate experience.

I believe we had 24 students and they were six different clusters of students that they can connect with each other, they can connect with us, they can connect with the community-based organization. It just felt like a lifeline for them. For them to be able to express their sense of loneliness or frustration or joy, to just have that very human contact, I think it was just so meaningful for them.

The other thing that I wanted to share is that the students didn't want to stop. [chuckles] We thought it was going to be a one-quarter project, but some of them wanted to continue. They wanted to have an Instagram campaign. They wanted to construct a website. Some of the students also created a curriculum about Photovoice that they then taught to middle school students in the Anaheim School District so that they could work on a project related to the dangers of vaping.

Then other students thought, "Okay. Well, there's going to be a reopening, a reclosing. How can we document those moments?" The project just went on and on. [chuckles] I think it really reflected how much the project meant to the students, but they were still so attached to it. I think those two experiences really stick out to me.

[00:27:08] Host: How many photos do you think that you archived during this project?

[00:27:13] Judy: We put a limit [chuckles] because students took a lot of pictures. I think the original-- Did we have like [crosstalk]

[00:27:21] Julia: About 49, I believe. Yes. Almost about two photographs per student.

[00:27:26] Host: Per student? Okay.

[00:27:27 Julia: Per student. Mm-hmm.

[00:27:29] Judy: There were other projects that continued on afterwards. I don't think we were as systematic in archiving those materials, but we did have one physical exhibition that circulated. Also, some of the students published a photo essay that appeared in the Amerasia Journal, which is a journal-- which is, I think, the longest-running journal devoted to the field of Asian-American studies.

[00:27:53] Host: How do you see how this archival content will be used to share that moment in history years down the line?

[00:28:03] Judy: Do you want to go ahead, Julia?

[00:28:04] Julia: Okay. [chuckles] Sure. I was going to say I hope there's not another pandemic where folks have to experience that again, but for any future researchers or just students curious about what it was like to be a student during this time, I hope that they could look back to these student-created records. Like we mentioned earlier, reading their descriptions that provides further context, letting them know where it was taken, why that was meaningful to that student.

What I really hope is that people just continue to see that the AAPI community is not a monolith, that there are so many experiences, that we all experienced the pandemic in varying lenses and varying ways. Through this project, as Judy has mentioned, I hope it comes across in the records, but there was just so much collaboration and a strong sense of care and community between not just our project team, but with the students and our community partners. I really hope that that's something that comes across and people look back on this project.

[00:29:12] Judy: Just add that we, ourselves, as the project mentors, we're also documenting the process. We actually published two essays, one in Asian American Pacific Islander Nexus, that Julia was the lead author. We were sharing how this is a project that really comes out of the broader mission of UCI as an AANAPISI, so Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution, and hopes that other institutions might see this as a model way to work with students and community members. The other publication that Phuc was the lead author for was, I think, Public Health-- Do you remember, Julia? Public Health Access or Public Health Partnership?

[00:29:54] Julia: The Journal of Public Health?

[00:29:56] Judy: Something like that, but they had a special issue on Photovoice. Our essay was actually co-selected to be the best essay for that journal. What was really remarkable to me was that the other essay that was co-selected was the person who founded the methodology. [chuckles] That was like an incredible honor and moment of celebration. Yes. We ourselves were archiving in the process through academic publishing.

[00:30:23] Julia: Sorry. It was the Health Promotion Practice Journal. To add to what Judy was mentioning, not only were Judy and Phuc interviewing the students to ask about their experiences, but through that additional grant, Phuc and Judy were also interviewing the rest of the project team.

In that way, we were also [chuckles] archiving our experiences of how to even run a virtual project like this with myself at the time being in Toronto and different time zones, how are we meeting, how did this come together, what did it mean for us to engage in this project, and what do we learn from the students and our community-based partners?

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[00:31:10] Host: We'd like to thank Judy Tzu-Chun Wu and Julia Huỳnh for their time, their expertise, and their passion. Medium History is produced by Past Forward, with support from Chapman University, and Dr. Stephanie Takaragawa. For more socially conscious content, visit pastforward.com or follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

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