-I-

This is the story of how my Orthodox Pascha project came about. It was through neither a common nor obvious formula. The act of creating this work has served more than one purpose over the nine years since I captured my first photo of an Epitaphios procession in 2014. I formally began documenting Pascha with intent, focusing on one church, St. Markella, in 2016.

I pursued this project to practice documentary photography and reconnect myself with making art. It felt meaningful to record a lesser-known tradition of my neighborhood, the way I saw it; as I literally and abstractly embodied the changes none of us would outlast. This is a story of old and new residents sharing a neighborhood and trying to learn about each other. The best way to understand this work is armed with knowledge of what led me into Queens.

My college boyfriend gave me most of the money to move to NYC in 2008. I was 24 years old. With what I earned at a post-college retail job, it was exactly enough for me to survive a few months while I looked for work and somewhere for us to live, while he finished out a temporary work contract. My small group of connections provided a crash-landing, I did multiple thesis projects at SCAD, and could look for work in more than one field. Like how so many have arrived in NYC before us, the plan was to send me over first, and three months later he would join me.

My family is white and working class; I am adopted from Asia. While hardly without privilege in this country, it’s also true that my family’s lack of financial dexterity meant that, like many, my parents largely lived paycheck to paycheck. Despite this (or maybe because of this) my parents would gladly give someone the shirt off their back. Their values of generosity and concern for others measure considerably against what they could never have taught me about accumulating and keeping wealth. Student loans, second mortgages, piecemeal family assistance, part time service jobs, and work-study gigs are what got me through art school.

On arriving in New York City, I couch surfed between friends in Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Crown Heights. It was a disconcerting shame to see how developers were gentrifying these Brooklyn neighborhoods. Entire homes to generations of working class families would vanish in a few days, immediately replaced by expensive luxury buildings only for wealthy outsiders. With few job prospects, no money of my own, and my credit shot after finishing college with student loan debt, I had much more in common with the working class people being pushed out with no alternatives, and increasingly less in common with my better-funded peers easily signing leases for fancy units in the new buildings going up where those old families once lived.

The details of exactly how this happened are too extraordinary and granular to note here, but a dear old college friend suddenly had to move out of her Astoria apartment to take a job in another state. She convinced her roommate to let me take the room. While I struggled to find work in a recession, with much of my life in shambles for other reasons, at least I had this blessing and the possibility of something good here. This person ended up becoming one of my favorite people (really; up there in Top 5 Humans, for me). To say I’m grateful for this person is an understatement; and when I think of Astoria, I often think of her, too.

Queens was different in every way a place could be. Even in 2008, there were relatively few signs of impending development. To this day, across the borough, the famously diverse denizens proudly claim their birthright of vigilant, boisterous, self-appointed guardianship over the best features and cherished idiosyncrasies of their dominion. It was encouraging to see so many communities not only intact, but still strongly rooted and living out loud with no intention of stopping. Even the modest, city-adjacent Astoria staunchly retained its unpretentious, retro character.

From my artist statement: This neighborhood has been home to a significant Greek population as early as the 1920’s. Between the overlapping conflicts of the Second World War and Greece's civil war, steady immigration peaked in the late 1940’s to 1950’s and lasted into the 1970’s. Residents and visitors today quickly acclimate to the many signs of Greek culture here.

For decades, the majority of Astoria’s population has come from all points surrounding the Mediterranean: Southern Europe and the Balkan region, Northern Africa, The Levant, and West Asian countries. Also long represented are residents from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean. There are communities of people from South Asian countries including India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In this part of Astoria in 2008, I did stand out as one of relatively few visible Asian-Americans my age. The current influx of this demographic to northwest Queens is a hyper-recent change.

In 2008, I wanted the way I connected with the residents of Astoria to prove that I appreciate the impact of previous generations, to change the assumption that a newcomer like me wouldn’t. Rather than be alienated from my neighbors, I wanted to get to know them and let them get to know me. I wanted to make room in my heart for their experiences because I wanted to put down my own roots, too.

In reality this involved kindly assuaging the concerns of a couple of the older families who saw me moving in that I am not a foreign spy, or here to take over their homes and businesses. I’m just a person without many options who needs to live somewhere. As a foreign-presenting adoptee raised in the US, I’m never exactly what you think I am at first sight. I don’t fit into one category. I don’t belong precisely where you think I belong. Seeing me for who I really am requires that I perform varying degrees of work to change minds and correct assumptions of the people I meet, no matter where I go. Few people would ever guess that this particular Asian (me) is actually the product of trans-national adoption.

Without knowing this about me, and without realizing I so drastically (laughably) lacked the wealth to partake in gentrification even if I wanted to (and I never wanted to), I do see why my neighbors were wary of what my presence foretold. Young artists overtaking an older neighborhood, without any previous connection to or interest in the area other than the affordable apartments and studios; the classic first stage of the gentrification process.

The Astoria I know is only recently ceding to development. Having held off gentrification for a long time (a small point of pride for established residents) it’s currently being led on a short leash. I made this neighborhood my home from 2008 to 2021; where more than once I have loved, and I’ve lost, and had to start all over again. Today, I’ll catch up with neighbors on my old street, watching a new generation of residents go by. “Look at all these newcomers!” we say to each other in unison.

What changes are worth embracing and when do you hold down on what’s yours? What are the boundaries between capturing history, preserving memory, and forbearance to change? Why make anything where appreciation is relative to the people or places being gone? What happens when someone picks up our pictures again, imagining another person in another time, feeling a connection to the past and future? What about those of us who’ve been severed from our histories for reasons beyond our control? When creating and recreating your own history, the connecting points that seem like mysteries in fact become the keys to the entire story.

May the newcomers explore the many side streets throughout the roomy heart of Queens and stick around for a while.
May you one day unexpectedly break bread with your neighbors, take in their stories, and see your block through their eyes.
May you be blessed with the company of lively spirits of the old residents here, as real as they ever were; while you imagine a brand new future.
May you love it enough to let it change you in return.

If it is true that love is to be forever changed, then let Queens and the good people of this borough represent a rare and real love that I gladly let forever change me.

To Queens, with love.

-I-
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Stay tuned in for Part 2…