A private collection by filmmaker and photographer Christian Lee (beforehand featured here). Lee is an award-winning storyteller and Hoyt Scholar at UCLA. For Lee, the digital camera can be utilized to revive dignity and company to communities usually erased from the bigger story of American life. The photographs offered right here revolve round Lee’s personal upbringing. When his household immigrated to the US, they settled in South Los Angeles. Lee remembers driving down Western Avenue and spontaneous visits to Crenshaw, the place they might go to the tiny condo his father and his siblings grew up in:
“The connection my kinfolk shared with town unfolded as a posh interaction between sorrow and pleasure, battle and success—the continuously synthesized immigrant narrative started taking dynamic form as we attended the Annual Kingdom Day Parade. Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy was instrumental to the progress of our respective communities and the deep influence that Dr. King’s heroism had. It permits us to confront a posh historical past layered with pressure, injustice, and violence. This area of town has not all the time been unified, nevertheless, as my family members remind me, we by no means stop to rebuild. The wildfires and widespread hatred threatened to stop us from uniting. The Kingdom Day Parade was cancelled, and lots of Los Angelinos had been mourning. Nonetheless, we discovered a strategy to heal. Attending the rescheduled Dr. King parade was an exquisite demonstration of solidarity in a time when apathy appears prevalent. Once I interacted with these kids spectating curiously from their porches or the households cheering below our metropolis’s palm bushes, I noticed a future. I noticed hope.”
Christian Lee participated in our 2025 Booooooom Artwork & Photograph Ebook Award and made our shortlist. His first monograph, Crenshaw, will probably be revealed by Kris Graves Initiatives (KGP Monolith) in April 2026.
