The Space Between Two Worlds

  • Dates
    2017 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Topics Portrait, Contemporary Issues, Editorial
  • Locations Oregon, New York, United States, New Jersey, California

“The Space Between Two Worlds” focuses on how a legacy of racism can influence who we see as desirable romantic partners. It is about the barriers to love interracial couples may face and the compassion and understanding that binds them together in the end.

Taylor was five years old when her father said if she ever brought home a “black boy” she would be disowned. While riding Boston transit, Colleen was told by a stranger that she should be ashamed of herself for dating an Asian man. Because of their preconceived ideas about black masculinity, Daisy received pushback from her Latino family when she revealed that she was in an interracial relationship. In 2018, many Americans still face barriers for love and acceptance when it comes to interracial intimacy.

In the last 50 years, interracial relationships have gone from illegal, to taboo, to relatively uncommon depending on where you live in the United States. Before Taylor, Colleen and Daisy, interracial relationships were met with racist reactions, sometimes extreme violence or death.

Richard and Mildred Loving were perhaps the most widely known interracial couple. Their fight for equal love began in 1958 when they were arrested for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited whites from marrying people classified as “colored.” But nearly a decade later, their act of love proved victorious over white supremacy when the Supreme Court struck down all legal restrictions for intermarriage, deeming these laws unconstitutional across the U.S. on June 12, 1967.

I am in an interracial relationship, and I am inspired by those of the past who used their love to make my experience today possible.

I have been advised that storytellers should pursue those questions that haunt them the most before falling asleep. The questions that motivated me to explore Western portrayals of Asian men and women, ask how cultural perceptions affect the development of personal relationships. What first began as an examination into my own identity, as an Asian man in America, developed into a project to understand how a legacy of racism can influence who we see as desirable romantic partners and how interracial intimacy will reflect America’s demographic shift.

The minority population in America is poised to become the majority population within the next several decades. This demographic shift presents a unique opportunity to trace how America’s dating landscape will change. There are 120.5-million people married in the United States today, with 12-million in interracial marriages, or about ten percent of all married couples. This is an incredibly divisive time emboldened by far-right supporters decrying a “white genocide” in America, which also makes this conversation important to have now.

Despite the fact that interracial marriages has increased by five times, from three percent in 1967 to seventeen percent in 2015, collective visibility for interracial couples and their stories remain small. Studies from the Pew Research Center show that intermarriage rates and pairings vary when broken down by race and gender. In 2015, Asian women were three times more likely than Asian men to marry a white person, and black men were two times as likely to marry someone of a different race than black woman. Only eleven percent of white newlyweds marry outside of their race and yet sixty-eight percent of all interracial newlywed couples are between one white person and one person of color. Deconstructing the cause behind these underreported facts can help us understand the origins of interracial intimacy and how race has historically been used as a dividing tool to maintain structures of oppression.

This project began in California in February 2017. It includes couples in Oregon, New Jersey, and New York. I will continue to photograph couples across the United States, from Honolulu, Hawaii where forty-two percent of all newlyweds have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, to Jackson, Mississippi and Asheville, North Carolina, where just three percent of newlyweds are intermarried. I plan to create a visual map that outlines the states and regions with the lowest intermarriage rates and those with the highest. The West, for example, sees twenty-two percent of all newlyweds marrying someone of a different race; fourteen percent in the South, thirteen percent on the East Coast, and eleven percent in the Midwest.

The people I have met have shown me that the experiences of interracial couples are the unacknowledged echoes of America’s past. I believe those consequences need to be documented. Interracial intimacy and a future of mixed-race children cannot end racism alone. My mission is to build on the belief that interracial intimacy can act as a bridge to a world of compassion and understanding.

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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Dan Freeman and Christine Liu on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. Christine: "I think if I was dating a non-white, non-Asian man I would receive more comments from my own family, perhaps from others as well. Not only is the white man and Asian woman relationship more common, I think culturally for Asian immigrant families it's more accepted to date a white person than a non-Asian person of a different race. All in all, I've never had to defend my relationship with Dan."

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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Ahsan Ahwan and Laurie Soderstrom on Sunday, April 23, 2017 in Granite Bay, Calif. Ahsan: "The brunt of my sense of racism in America being pushed on me didn't occur until 9-11. I was on Maui in the week before. All was blissful. I came back. The towers fell. When I next drove up to Eugene, people would lean out their jacked up truck windows and yell stuff like, "Go back to Arabia you asshole!" and "fucking sand nigger!" I've heard it all. It doesn't really affect Laurie and I, not yet. The day it does, we'll be deeply affected and saddened by it, but we'll deal with the upset and the feelings, come closer together and have a breakthrough in love, trust, and relationship together. That, I know for certain."

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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Richard Inonog and Colleen O’Malley on Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017, in New York, NY. Colleen: "One morning we were on the train and this older white guy across from us looked right at me and said ‘you should be ashamed with yourself.’ I was really surprised and I was confused at first by what he was saying. I said ‘excuse me’ and then he said ‘your parents are ashamed of you.’ I was with Rich and we’re an interracial couple and so I realized what he was talking about. At first I just wanted to be defiant and say ‘no actually my parents aren’t ashamed of me, they’re proud of me for not being a bigot.’ At that point it got into this thing where Rich was getting upset and it became a confrontation. I put myself physically in between this guy and Rich because I didn’t want it to turn into a physical fight. Luckily the doors opened on the train and I just pulled Rich off. It just wasn’t worth it at all."

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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Matt Sorenson and Xavier Coleman On Monday, May 29, 2017, in Brooklyn, NY. Matt: "It is a weird thing with racism and also homophobia. What angle is the hate coming from sometimes? When we first started dating we were sitting in Williamsburg and someone screamed ‘faggot!’ at us. It’s crazy to me that we can be in New York in a place like this and still experience that, especially outright hatred. It was still also so new for our relationship that we were like ‘woah that was intense and do you want to talk about it and are you ok? We didn’t really dive into it. Sometimes you don’t need to talk about everything."

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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Daisy Quiñonez and Dylan Muldrew on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2017, in Portland, Ore. Daisy: "I definitely got some push back, especially from men in my family. It has to do with how they see black masculinity. Honestly I think they see it as a threat... I haven’t formally introduced Dylan to my dad because of racist things he said. "

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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AJ Howard and Gretchen Schwab on Sunday, Feb. 12, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. AJ: "Hopefully in my super idealized head people will think ‘wow that’s a really loving couple they really love each other,’ but like in that slightly pessimistic view I’m thinking that people might think ‘oh it’s just some black guy with a white girl because he doesn’t like black women,’ which is not the case."

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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Taylor Meyers and Leandra Leseur on Saturday, Nov. 18, 2017, in Jersey City, New Jersey Taylor: "I love my dad but life could have turned out a lot different I think. I don’t know how my parents were married, they’re complete opposites... When I was five years old he told me if I ever dated a black boy he would disown me. That stayed in mind. I didn’t tell my dad for two years. We [Leandra] had a conversation about how this was unfair that I was just kinda hiding her and pretending like she doesn’t exist… That really pushed me to have that conversation with my dad. When I had this conversation it was like I had to confront everything all at once because not only am I telling you I’m in an interracial relationship, which you don’t like, but I also have to mention that she’s a woman. It was kind of like a double whammy for him. He was the most emotional that I’ve ever seen him... I was like, 'you can change.'"

© Andrew Seng - Image from the The Space Between Two Worlds photography project
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Asia Gabrielle and Devin Guzman on Sunday, March 5, 2017, in Navato, Calif. Asia: "Being in the north bay I literally might see five black people the entire three or four days that I'm here on the weekend. When I go into a more white, conservative area it’s just super obvious to me. I gotta think about where I am and what I'm doing. I don’t get as loud and out there, and I notice myself being a lot more reserved when we're out at dinner. I’m looking at everyone else looking at me, and Devin is all out and enjoying himself. Depending on where we are I may match that attitude."

The Space Between Two Worlds by Andrew Seng

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