Disconnect

An exploration of Manhattan’s Chinatown has served as one pathway towards reckoning with my own relationship to Chinese culture. This project takes place mainly inside the desolate East Broadway mall.

What has started as a pathway towards reckoning with my own Chinese American identity, Disconnect has evolved into an anthropological dive into understanding what makes up Chinese culture and cultures as a whole. Exploring spaces throughout New York City like restaurants, strip malls, and specialty stores, I have discovered uniting patterns and senses of structures in which Chinese culture persists. Alters, incense, cigarettes, tea, calendars- these are visual representations of how traditions are carried out on a day to day basis, and how communities are united within these rituals. Disconnect continues to unpack the patterns and structures that make up Chinese culture in New York City through capturing images of the people and objects that exists within these spaces.