Haruka Sakaguchi photographs, 2020 May

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Summary

Creator:
Sakaguchi, Haruka, 1990
Abstract:
Haruka Sakaguchi is a Japanese-born freelance documentary photographer currently residing in New York City. Her project, "'I Will Not Stand Silent.' 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality" addresses pandemic-fueled racism against Asian Americans. Created by Sakaguchi in collaboration with TIME photo editors Sangsuk Sylvia Kang and Katherine Harris Pomerantz, the black-and-white digital photographs and accompanying textual accounts tell the stories of ten young Asian Americans who share their experiences of racism during the pandemic and how their perspectives have been shaped by the Black Lives Matter protests. Each person's project entry consists of a first-person account in Word file format and a digital image file in Tiff format showing a portrait of the individual laid atop a larger photograph of the location in New York City where they were harassed. Acquired as part of the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University.
Extent:
2.0 Gigabytes (20 files (10 .tif, 10 .doc))
Language:
Materials in English
Collection ID:
RL.11897

Background

Scope and content:

"'I Will Not Stand Silent.' 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality" is a project that addresses pandemic-fueled racism against Asian Americans. Created by photographer Haruka Sakaguchi in collaboration with TIME photo editors Sangsuk Sylvia Kang and Katherine Harris Pomerantz, the project comprises photographic portraits and narrative accounts of ten New York-based Asian Americans who share their experiences of racism during the pandemic and how their perspectives have been shaped by the Black Lives Matter protests.

Each person's project entry consists of a black-and-white .tif image file showing a portrait of the individual laid atop a larger photograph of the location where the individual was harassed, and a Word .doc file containing a one-paragraph narrative text of that person's account. The image titles were created by the photographer. The photographer Haruka Sakaguchi's portrait and narrative related to her own incident of racist harassment is included in the group of ten experiences.

Biographical / historical:

Haruka Sakaguchi (1990- ) is a Japanese-born freelance documentary photographer currently residing in New York City. Her documentary work focuses on cultural identity and sense of place, and has been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, TIME, The New Yorker, and other publications. Sakaguchi won the 2021 Duke University Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award for her portraits and narratives about racist aggressions against Asians and Asian Americans in New York City which make up this collection.

Katherine Harris Pomerantz is the Director of Photography at TIME magazine.

Sangsuk Sylvia Kang is a photographer, journalist, and an Assistant Photo Editor at TIME.

The project "'I Will Not Stand Silent.' 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality" was started in spring 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. The project team of Haruka Sakaguchi, Sangsuk Sylvia Kang, and Katherine Harris Pomerantz decided to make portraits of New York City Asian Americans who had experienced harassment, and combine them with photographs of the sites where it occurred – many of which are painfully familiar scenes for New York residents, like bodegas and public transportation. The creators took a conceptual approach to allow the viewer to immerse themselves in the incident without glorifying or re-victimizing the participant.

The street photographs and portraits, which were then combined into one image file, were taken by Sakaguchi between May 24, 2020 and May 29, 2020. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the photographer gave each individual posing instructions over FaceTime and screenshot their portrait. At the same time, she gathered their narrative accounts in an online interview. She then visited the corresponding locations and photographed them on her camera.

The resulting images were published in the July 6th, 2020 issue of TIME magazine, and exhibited at Photoville, coupled with a virtual panel discussion featuring the participants about privilege and intersectionality between Black and Asian Americans. The project also received the 2020 Front Page Awards in the Photography Essay category.

[Source for note: Photographer's statement, 2021]

Acquisition information:
The Haruka Sakaguchi photographs were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library as a purchase in 2021.
Processing information:

Processed by Paula Jeannet, June 2021

Accession(s) described in this collection guide: 2021-0040

Arrangement:

The project entries for each individual are arranged in the photographer's original order.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Contents

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Restrictions:

Access note. Collection contains electronic records that must be requested and accessed in our reading room. Contact Research Services with questions.

Terms of access:

The copyright interests in this collection have not been transferred to Duke University. For more information, consult the Rubenstein Library's Citations, Permissions, and Copyright guide.

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Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Haruka Sakaguchi photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

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