The Film
|
Our storyteller is Corinne Chan Takayama, granddaughter of Leo and Isabella May Chan Lee, remarkable photographers who chronicled lives in a growing Chinatown from an insider's perspective. Corinne shares her remembrances of them not as preeminent photographers and civic activists for decades, but as her gungung and popo, people who owned a business and had parties, but mostly who were loving grandparents.
This film gives us insight in how these new immigrants attempted to preserve their unique cultural heritage while assimilating into American society.
Don Hardy, artist |
Juxtaposed with Corinne’s personal memories are the broader perspectives of Wylie Wong, historian Judy Yung, Chinese opera performers, and others who place May’s work in the context of their times, politically, culturally, and historically. Text fills in some of the historical subtext as well; there is no narrator.
The photographs show weddings, parades, banquets, Boy Scouts, family associations, and civic organizations: all aspects of life in a racially isolated community. Despite racial discrimination and severely restrictive laws, May's striking images present a vibrant, growing community. They go beyond a commercial studio making pictures for money and show their own version of Chinatown’s growth as an important social and economic space,
American Chinese depicting Chinese Americans and Chinatown as they saw them.
Always, though, the crux of this story is the photographs—wistful, haunting, evocative, poetical.
The photographs show weddings, parades, banquets, Boy Scouts, family associations, and civic organizations: all aspects of life in a racially isolated community. Despite racial discrimination and severely restrictive laws, May's striking images present a vibrant, growing community. They go beyond a commercial studio making pictures for money and show their own version of Chinatown’s growth as an important social and economic space,
American Chinese depicting Chinese Americans and Chinatown as they saw them.
Always, though, the crux of this story is the photographs—wistful, haunting, evocative, poetical.
With remarkable darkroom techniques, decades before the arrival of Photoshop and digital photography, Leo and Isabella May blended photographs taken 3,000 miles apart, creating a memory of a family united . . . in the world of The May's Photo Studio.
Sumptuous images of Cantonese opera show another aspect of the developing community captured by May’s. Cantonese opera was at one of its most innovative stages in the United States with the fusion of traditional Chinese and Western sensibilities. The performers posed for May's with striking results.