You may have seen photos from Sam Soon’s series Sad & Asian floating around online spaces lately. They’re eye-catching, vibrantly colored portraits of members of Sad & Asian, a 4,000-strong Facebook group that serves as a community for those identifying as creative Asian femmes, and a catalyst for dialogue on contemporary issues. Sam is a junior at NYU Tisch majoring in Photography and hails from San Mateo, CA. We chat about her vision and inspiration for the series, Asian representation in the media, and her ties to the West Coast. -Elaine

What do you do?

I am a photography major in Tisch right now. I’ve done a lot of documentary work around feminine identities and queer identities but now I’ve kind of shifted my focus into Asian-American identities that encompass all of those.

How did you get started with your Sad & Asian series and what inspired you?

I’m documenting the group Sad & Asian, which was founded by Esther Fan and Olivia Park at RISD. Now it’s got over 4,000 members. I’m doing an open call for subjects in the New York City area and photographing them. I posted in the group awhile back and since then I’ve had 9 or 10 people. Because of the posts I’ve been doing since then, more people have been contacting me.

I joined the group in November, and I thought it was such an interesting way of interacting with one another, and such a way of supporting each other that I had never seen before, so I thought it would be interesting to take people out of that online space and see what they’re actually like and what they’re about.

So after you contact them or they contact you, how does it usually play out?

So I’ll ask them how they want to be portrayed in the photoshoot and when they see a photo of themselves, what they like about it. And if they have any props that further that vision, to bring them in, and if they have any other outfit ideas to bring it all in. And then we shoot.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the photos have a similar theme–you play with lighting a lot. Do you want to talk a bit about the aesthetics?

Yeah, for one thing I never shot that much in studio before so this is also a challenge for me. But I really wanted to do something–it sounds lame to say edgier, but I thought it would be a good juxtaposition especially because when I started shooting, the whole Karlie Kloss Vogue thing had just come out. The lighting there and all the saturation is really subdued, which furthers the whole typical representation of submissiveness. And so I really wanted to counteract that, so in some ways it’s an open response to that, but not really. I just wanted to make it really vibrant and really in your face. [Amy: That’s so interesting, I never thought about the subdued colors along with the submissive stereotype.] Yeah, it’s all subconscious. You can do so many different things with color.

“I thought it was such an interesting way of interacting with one another, and such a way of supporting each other that I had never seen before, so I thought it would be interesting to take people out of that online space and see what they’re actually like and what they’re about.”

Do you do a lot of intersecting identities in your own work?

Yeah, for sure. I didn’t work with the intersection of race until this year, but I worked with what it means to be non-binary or female-identifying, and queerness, and my work from last year which was my first year in Tisch, I actually did a project at the end of last year about female-identifying and non-binary people in the city and where they go to find calmness and quiet.

When I was doing that project I was thinking about things that are important to me, even when I was applying to Tisch. My whole application was about the concept of quietness and places I can go to find that, especially living in cities because I was living in London, and here. I think starting out a project by thinking about what’s important to you, and wanting to explore that in other people, is a really good place to start. At least that’s where I’ve started in all of my projects.

Are most of these projects mostly just things you come up with on your own or class assignments?

They’re for class, mostly. But my latest one that I started back home is a bunch of self-portraits, holding a mirror in natural settings. That was just an independent project.

Do you do film, or digital, or everything?

I do both, but mostly digital. Just ‘cause film is more expensive. I wish I could shoot film more and that I was better at it.

Architecture student Joyce Li for the Sad & Asian project (2017)

Can you talk about where you’re from, and a bit about your background?

I grew up in the Bay Area in California, in San Mateo. I was originally adopted from Chengdu, China, but I was adopted into an all-Chinese family so there wasn’t much discord because of that, and I always knew I was adopted. My high school was like a third Asian. I never felt like that part of my identity was challenged or that it was that big of a deal until I moved to London for my freshman year, then people would start shouting “nihao” on the street and like, ask me what kind of Asian are you? And then I was like, oh, things are a little different outside of my very liberal Asian bubble.

Have you always been into photography?

No, when I was like 13 I’d take my mom’s camera and take pictures of flowers really up close (laughs) like everyone did. I’d be like, wow, I’m such a photographer! But freshman year of high school I applied to be on our school’s newspaper as a photographer on a whim and I got in, which was cool, and so that started me on a photojournalism route.

By my senior year I was really tired of it, of telling stories that only other people wanted me to tell. I was in AP Photo junior year and I finally got to construct my own narrative using visuals. So that was a huge turning point for me, even though my photos were not that good. It was really important to gain that level of communication.

So did you know you wanted to be a photography major when you applied to NYU?

No, not at all. I went into the LS program kind of on the fence about being a photography major, so that’s why I went to London and took all of these GE’s. But by the end of the year I had taken so many photos and there’s nothing I want to do more, so I just applied to Tisch and got the internal transfer.

Untitled self-portraits from an in-progress independent series (2017)

What made you want to go to NYU?

Originally, when I was in high school applying to colleges, I was like, I gotta get as far away from California as possible. But now I’m like, aw, I really miss home and kinda wanna go back. I really want to go to CCA for grad school in Oakland. I think a lot of people that I’ve talked to from the West Coast want to go back.

I don’t know if I want to settle down in San Mateo, where I came from, because I feel like it’s too small sometimes. Like being around my family too much is going to get too claustrophobic. When I was a kid, my mom wanted me to be close to my grandma and having that relationship was really important to me and to her, so I would want that for my own kids. But I don’t want to be too close.

“I never felt like that part of my identity was challenged or that it was that big of a deal until I moved to London for my freshman year, then people would start shouting "nihao” on the street and like, ask me what kind of Asian are you? And then I was like, oh, things are a little different outside of my very liberal Asian bubble.“

What do your parents think of your photography in general, and are they supportive of it?

My mom is really supportive of it. I did an archive-based project of my grandma’s old photos a while back and my mom was really supportive. So was my grandma, she gave me all her old albums to bring back to school. They were like 70+ years old and falling apart, and she trusted me to lug them across the country. But I think they like it because I’m also preserving our own family history and in the process of creating my own, which I think they appreciate.

But sometimes I think they think I’m a little too radical (laughs). Which is bound to happen. [Amy: That’s awesome. I feel like for a lot of Chinese families, we don’t have a lot of family history or records because they burned everything. Like I always asked my mom like, what did your grandparents do, where were they from? Who are our extended family members? I know people who have family books with their family trees handwritten, but we don’t have any of that. Elaine: Yeah, I’ve never even seen a photo of my dad when he was a kid. Amy: Me neither!]

I think with Dads especially, there’s a particular silence. Which is kind of hard to overcome. I found that’s harder to overcome in a father-daughter relationship than a mother-daughter relationship. I’m just speculating because of Asian masculinity standards, they don’t want to talk about things that are a little more difficult when it comes to things about family history.

A single frame from Tell Me Who You Are Pt I, the archive-based project focused on Sam’s maternal grandmother. (2016)

Is that something that you’ve explored in your work, Asian masculinity?

I definitely want to. I definitely was thinking about doing that for my thesis, but I think there’s so much that I still want to do surrounding my mom’s side, like with my grandmother, that I want to get to a point where I feel content about the work I’ve done, or the things that I’ve figured out before I move on to another side.

How important is it that in photos or other types of visual art, that people have some kind of social or political message, in your opinion?

I never really go into a project thinking about the political repercussions of it, even though I know that’s unavoidable because of what I look like, what my subjects look like, who I am, who they are. I just think about qualities of myself that I have a hard time understanding and I want other people to not feel so alone. And that they can see a picture and identify with it. I think that’s really important for all visual artists, to be creating something like that, not necessarily creating work for other people but creating work that’s telling some version of their own truth.

With your current project, Sad & Asian, what kind of message are you trying to portray, if any?

What originally piqued my interest about doing a project like this was that other people in the group could see other members that they maybe could interact with and become online friends with in a way that’s really powerful and dynamic, that brings them to life a little more. Maybe see their own professions represented, aspects of their own cultures represented that they have a hard time communicating about themselves.

What are your thoughts on representation in the media?

This is a very good question because Ghost in the Shell just came out. I mean, obviously there’s a problem with representations of Asian-Americans in the media. I guess I’ll keep it centered on the group 'cause that’s a little easier, but representations in the media are hard to talk about from an East Asian perspective because East Asian perspectives are the ones being told, but they’re being told really poorly. So there’s that level of disappointment but a level of disappointment that not all of what it means to be Asian in America is being told. And then the constant erasure by whitewashing is consistently disappointing but not surprising. I don’t know if you guys saw the casting call for the new Mulan movie, but it actually gave me a little bit of hope because they wanted someone who’s 18-20 and who is Chinese and speaks fluent Chinese.

"I think that’s really important for all visual artists, to be creating something like that, not necessarily creating work for other people but creating work that’s telling some version of their own truth.”

Do you think you’re a part of any creative community at NYU or in Tisch?

Not really. I mean there are some people I’m friendly with in the department, but we’ve never hung out outside of class, and it’s hard especially because I was a transfer so a lot of those bonds had already been formed before I got there. And I have a lot of friends who do their own creative things but it’s not the same things as I do. But it’s good to have those kinds of friends to just knock around ideas with. Especially when they come from different backgrounds and areas of expertise.

Do you have any specific photographers or people you look up to in general or that you get inspiration from?

Yeah. I’ve been getting a lot of inspiration lately from Carrie Mae Weems. My work is not like hers at all, but just the way that she approaches different concepts of black feminine life…it gives me new perspectives about how to think about my own life, even though I don’t share many identities with her. But just to look at her work and know that she’s so successful gives me a lot of hope.

Do you feel like Tisch is a supportive environment? Like you’re free to do whatever?

With my professors, for sure, yeah. Sometimes I feel more alone, which I feel like is common with NYU, but when I think about all the professors I’ve had and all the individual support I’ve gotten from them, I really wouldn’t want to go anywhere else. I’m lucky because the photo department is small so I get to have the same professors once or twice in my college career, so they’re familiar with my work and I’m familiar with theirs.

Interview by Elaine Lo and Amy Ni.

For just Sam’s work, click here.

View Sam’s full portfolio at samanthasoonphotography.com.

Follow her Instagram at @samsoooooooon.