Looking Back, Moving Forward (LBMF) is an extension of the Visualizing Our Identities and Culture for Empowerment (VOICE)— a project that documented the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in Orange County. VOICE documented how COVID-19 impacted intimate spaces to public arenas. We specifically addressed access to health care and community resilience during the lockdown of Fall 2020 as well.
Looking Back, Moving Forward focuses on the reopening aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in June 2021 under the same spaces. As California moved forward with reopening, we want to illuminate the experiences of the AAPI community in their continued perseverance and resilience after facing adversity earlier in the pandemic. We center these experiences through the lens of leaders in community organizations of overlooked populations within the AAPI communities such as Southeast Asians, South Asians, and Pacific Islanders. In essence, our project aims to show the diversity, resilience, and joy within these overlooked communities from California’s progression in reopening as a comparison to our previous work in 2020 through VOICE.
By interacting with community members, the LBMF team aims amplify their voices and stories of friendships, connections, resilience, and the work that communities do at the local level that is not shown in mainstream media. In other words, our project seeks to document practices as well as visual and linguistic expressions of love and communal care.
Throughout this project, we use photovoice and oral histories as our main methodologies. Oral histories are conducted with local community leaders. The findings from these oral histories are supplemented with photovoice photography.
The photographs are separated into multiple themes. Make sure to check out the photographs by clicking on the themes itself!
This project was funded by the University of California, Irvine’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program and Summer Undergraduate Research Program.