Photographer Morris Lum Explores North America’s Chinatowns

The images in Morris Lum’s new ebook, Chinatowns: Tong Yan Gaai, provide a glimpse into Chinatowns throughout North America, offering a extra nuanced view into these ubiquitous areas. Taken in 16 totally different Chinatowns spanning between 2012 to 2024, the photos present eating places, memento outlets, and temples, but additionally embody photos taken from inside benevolent societies, vacant malls, kung fu golf equipment, and alleyways inaccessible to the general public.

The photos are loosely organized by visible themes or typologies, evoking a way of motion and dynamism. The writer notes, “I was thinking about how you would move in a Chinatown—You’re walking down the street and ‘Oh, here’s a shop, maybe I’ll jump inside for a minute and then come back out,’ then you go to the next space.”

Part of this visible journey consists of buildings and interiors that lack the visible markers related to Chinatowns—pink lanterns, dragons, stylized pagoda roofs, orientalized facades. One instance is an otherworldly inside of an insurance coverage workplace with kitschy sky-blue wallpaper and mirrored partitions. In one other diptych, a brick constructing that after housed a Vietnamese pharmacy and grocery retailer is proven years later as a development website. 

Although there are not any folks within the images, the pictures present an unimaginable sense of humanity. A restaurant signal represents somebody’s effort to run a enterprise, even when that effort was not in the end profitable. Framed images on a wall depict the individuals who gathered in these areas. Flowers at an altar present respect for deities or those that have handed.

Perhaps most intriguing are images of alleyways. In the interview on the finish of the ebook, Morris recounts studying from Chinatown elders concerning the significance of those hidden areas: “Jim [the Chinatown elder] was the one who took me to the hidden courtyards and alleys in Vancouver’s Chinatown and explained how they formed and how they were integral during the time of exclusion to people’s socializing and gathering.” 

Given that Chinatowns are so typically related to counterfeits, cheapness, and expediency, simply Lum’s act of capturing these photos on massive format movie is itself a profound assertion.

When I requested him why he went by the additional effort of enormous format movie images for seemingly atypical Chinatown topics, he replied: “I just think they deserve it.”