Taking photos of strangers

[shootingstar]

For the original news article that I posted at beginning, I was reminded of a photo that I took of my cousin's little boy in San Francisco's Chinatown when I was visiting relatives there.

The photo of the boy is spontaneous and I suppose "artsy" with the Chinese calligraphy in chalk on a blackboard somewhere at a storefront, but I didn't plan it that way at all.

When I first got the photo developed (it was over 20 yrs. ago), I suddenly realized that I don't go around deliberately shooting portraits of people I didn't know. I barely knew the little boy since he belonged to a cousin who I met for the lst time and previously I didn't even know she existed even though she is my age.

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A long time ago, a good friend's brother went to Asia, hiking and touring for a few months. I went to an evening get together where he showed a slide show of his best photos. He did have a few portrait facial shots of Asians who were strangers to him. He is Polish-Canadian. He sort of made comments in this distant analytical way of how they looked from an aesthetic viewpt.

The viewing group of friends, were all people I didn't know except for his sister, a good friend of mine. There was one other woman of Asian descent, who reacted quite strongly. I can't remember the whole incident, but basically she was furious at the paternalistic attitude of how these photos "objectified" people in this "exotic" country...well, if you think about it, these people could easily be a relative of hers or mine...at a different time or place. The rest of the acquaintances were all white.

I did feel very strange watching and hearing the commentary about the portrait shots, even before her outburst to the host. In all honesty, I actually did not watch the remainder of the slide show.

One person's exotica can be (but not always) another person's distant reminder of their loved ones/ancestors.

I do have an exotic shot of myself...I'm a baby and my mother is wearing a cheong-sam, the high collar Chinese dress. It is a shot that my siblings wish they had a similar photos of themselves when they were babies.