- Hi, I'm Li Wei Yang.
I'm the curator for Pacific Rim Collections,
here at the Huntington.
And today we're with Lisa See,
looking at the Lisa See Collection,
which contains over 300 glass plate negatives,
from Los Angeles' Old Chinatown,
roughly from the 1890s to the 1900s.
Lisa, can you tell us a little bit
about the original provenance of this collection?
How did it come to your family?
- Yeah, I have a couple of theories about that.
And of course, you and I have come up,
since we've seen the photos, with the third one.
The first is that when Old Chinatown was torn down,
to make way for Union Station,
my father, and my grandfather, went scavenging,
and they, you know, they just,
the people had been given 24 hours to move,
and so they left behind a lot,
just a lot of stuff.
And so my grandfather and dad, just, whatever they found,
they brought home.
And I do feel like this was one of the things
that they brought home,
and they just threw it in the shed.
But then later, when we were looking at the photos,
and I think on some of the ones that were printed,
there was the address of 510 Los Angeles Street.
And that was the location where our family store was,
for decades.
And so that brought about the second theory, which was,
maybe when the photographer moved,
he left that box of glass plates behind,
'cause they are, you know, really heavy,
really, really heavy,
having moved them many times myself.
So maybe he just left them on a shelf,
and our family moved in, was there for however long.
And then in 1949, when that last block of Chinatown
was torn down to make way for the freeway on-ramp,
stuff was packed up, went to different people's houses,
and the family went back to the store.
And so it could have happened that way.
And then we had that sort of third idea,
when you found in one of, again,
one of the developed photos,
a photo of 510 Los Angeles Street, the building there.
But that is not the building
where my grandparents and the family had the store.
So what I suspect is that between that time,
and the the multi-story building
that later was where our family store was,
there was this interim building
that looked to be, what was that one story?
- One story.
- Yeah, one story.
And that perhaps that's where the photographer was,
since he obviously took a photo of it.
What to me is so different about these,
is it's not someone on the outside looking in,
it's somebody who lives in the community,
who's part of the community,
and is taking photographs of the things that he sees.
Yes, he has his studio work.
But he's also out there, you know,
just a man crossing the street,
somebody doing, carrying something somewhere,
a man with his child crossing the street,
two people on bicycles,
kids, that that's the stuff that he saw around him.
I actually really love this one,
because it's that sort of early tourism of Chinatown.
- Yes.
- And this woman who's come to ride
in a kind of fake sedan chair.
But again, he's looking at it, to me,
he's just looking at her, and everything around it,
not in an exotic way.
- Yes.
Most of the photos that we have,
are mostly of men and children.
There are very few with Chinese women
pictured in these photos,
I think tells us something
about the uniqueness of this particular photo,
of featuring this lone Chinese woman,
walking across the street,
in one of the busiest intersections
in all of Los Angeles' Chinatown.
- Right.
- This could be a sex worker,
that was working in Chinatown at the time.
And, Los Angeles' Chinatown
was a place known for a lot of sex work,
not only for Chinese as well too,
for non-Chinese as well too.
- Exactly.
- That's where they gathered,
that's where they practice their trade.
- Right.
- And that's why I love this particular photo,
just the way she's looking down on,
she's aware of the camera,
and she's trying to avoid the gaze,
trying to avoid attention.
And the photographer's able to capture these moments.
- Right.
But I wonder if part of her looking down,
is not just about not wanting
to catch the photographer's eye,
but just staying within herself,
because it was dangerous to be out on the streets.
- So Lisa, here we have a few photos
of Chinese women being depicted.
Some of 'em were taken outside,
some of 'em were taken inside a studio.
This one in particular is actually a print photo,
as opposed to a glass plate negative.
Can you tell us a little bit
about the differences of the women being depicted here?
- Well, again, here's, you know,
here's a woman outside,
her dress doesn't look like this woman's.
But you know, from what we were talking about earlier,
it was pretty rare for just a wife to be out on the street.
She could have been what was, like a servant.
- Mm hmm.
- That was how I looked at that particular photo.
But I don't know.
And then here, you know, clearly seems to me,
she's the wife of a well-to-do merchant.
- I love the way that she's posing.
In the background,
you can see there is a stack of Chinese books.
- Right.
And she's holding one.
- And she's holding one,
and she is actually bending the Chinese book book, you know,
as if she's reading them as well too.
So something of this photo definitely tells us
that this woman is, perhaps, of different status,
- Yeah.
- when it comes to the woman that was being depicted
out in Chinatown, in, as you said,
the way that she's dressed,
and the way that this whole studio prop is being set up,
I think it just shows her confidence.
- Right.
- As, perhaps she's the wife
of a prominent Chinese merchant.
- Yes.
- We don't really know.
But I think this particular photo, it's a very good example
of what was taken by the photographer,
in order to depict a woman of a high social standing.
- Exactly.
- And then, do you wanna talk about this one?
It's a white American woman, presumably,
and she is basically.
- Well, she has something on.
- There's something.
- There is something on, but it's, she's definitely.
- She looks like she's topless, at least from the shot.
- Yes, and so who was that taken for?
You know, we haven't talked yet,
about those more sort of formal portraits of men.
But this would be, it's like the kind of equivalent.
I mean, obviously it was done in a studio,
so you know, when the formal portraits of men,
there are a lot of reasons that those were made.
You know, to send them home to your family.
- Right.
- Possibly for immigration, sort of official purposes.
But this doesn't fit either from those cases.
- It doesn't fit, it doesn't.
- You would not send this photo home to your family in Ohio.
(both laughing)
- Yeah.
- You know, one of the things I love,
is all the children that are in these.
So to have women of course,
but to see children in different aspects, you know,
is he just kind of wanting this for posterity?
- Yes, yes.
- Is he showing off?
Did he work there?
- Yeah.
- Here you have these little children,
and they're all dressed up.
Look at those girls in they're matching outfits.
- Yeah.
And at that time, you know, so few children,
you know, if there're not a lot of women,
there're not gonna be many children either.
- Right, right.
- So anytime I think you can see children,
in a kind of natural environment like that, you know,
out in a street,
but also, again, the sort of a more formal portrait.
I know you have one with I think three kids in it,
and they're all dressed up.
- Yeah.
- And I could imagine somebody sending that home
to the grandparents.
- I think they're special,
because they're very different
from some of our existing images of Old Chinatown.
You know, they're taken in buildings,
they're taken by tourists.
- Right.
- They're taken by white photographers at the time.
But these ones, I feel like, because of the possibility,
the high possibility that they were taken
by Chinese American photographers who lived in Chinatown,
- Right.
- who knows the place, who knows the residents.
And the fact that these were photos commissioned
by the Chinese residents as well too.
- Exactly.
- So I think the feeling is very different
from the ones that we have.
And that's what makes this collection so unique,
is that they're so humanizing about the people
that lived in Chinatown at the time.
You know, they tell us a lot,
not only about the place itself,
but then also reminds us about that exclusion
was something that was overshadowing everything
around this time as well too,
as the Chinese Exclusion was going on between 1882 and 1943.
- Right.
- And this collection, I think,
captures so many different residents,
so many different scenes.
- Different classes.
- Different classes as well too gender,
like you were saying, so many children as well too.
- The other thing I would say about them is, you know,
when you mentioned exclusion,
and this was such a difficult time to be here,
and all of the restrictions,
including the fact that you couldn't own property.
So, you know, the Chinese were.
and you couldn't live outside of Chinatown
in many cities.
And so that's why Chinatowns developed,
was that you had to be in this enclave.
And yet what you see from these,
is that even with exclusion, even with the restrictions,
even with the racism and discrimination,
people were going about their lives,
and, you know, they were working,
they were going out to dinner.
I mean, all of the things that make life, life.
And that, you know, riding out, taking a ride on a bicycle.
You know, that it takes that time period,
I mean that time period is the frame around all of these.
But that within all of the difficulties
that people were facing,
they found a way to build community,
to enjoy themselves,
and also just to preserve their lives,
in a certain kind of way,
whether it was to keep, for themself,
to give away as a gift, to send back home to China,
but also it's a way for us to know how they lived.