HAPPY TO BE HERE
(2017-2018, statement written 2026)
On view at the Asian Resource Center in Oakland, CA, February through July 2026.
I was fortunate to have been raised by a mother who tried not to saddle me with her fears or expectations. Recognizing my interest in documentary photography, she suggested: “you should do a photo series of this.” “This” was her life during stage 4 lung cancer.
The illness showed no warning signs. My parents had just moved from the midwest to start a life near me and other family members in California. They were still in the process of unpacking their new home and making retirement plans. There was so much expectation to make new memories - but not ones like these. In January 2018, my mother’s terminal diagnosis was in motion faster than my thoughts, emotions, or words could formulate. So I agreed with her, and took these photos that were never meant to be seen.
As I write this in January 2026, it has been nearly eight years since my mother passed, and just as long to understand why she, an intensely private and proud person, would invite me to photograph her most vulnerable moments. It was one of her final expressions of love: to pull me through a long and enduring grieving process; to encourage a deeper, more personal photographic practice; to help me help myself when words, medicine, and bodies fail us.
As much as death is about the deceased, it is also about the ones who loved them the most. These photos are a record of my family's love for one another as we stayed present for my mother, fumbled through the darkness of her loss, and eventually made space for the life that continued, together.