Andria Lo

The Way They Were: Photographs of Our Parents



My dad (fourth from right), Victoria Park, Hong Kong, 1960s

In recent years, I've revisited our family photo albums and have become fascinated with old photographs of my parents. They're some of my most favorite objects now. It goes without saying, we have never known our parents before they were parents. Looking at the photos, we see how they were, perhaps before they had met each other and before we were even a twinkle in their eye. They look so innocent, so fresh-faced! My dad had wavy hair! My mom wore bikinis! It adds a completely new dimension of relatability. Yes, it's true, our parents used to be YOUNG ADULTS.

For me, these photos are a rare glimpse at their life before family. They don't talk about those days much and I don't think I've ever seen old video footage of my parents. With the hyper-documentation and sharing going on these days, I doubt our kids will have anything left to wonder about us.

The Hyphen staff shared the following collection of photographs of their parents, aunties & uncles, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. Some photos were taken in America and some before immigrating. If you have photos of your parents you'd like to share, we'd love to see them! Please e-mail a jpg to hyphen.photo [at] gmail.com for a follow-up blog posting.

Enjoy these treasures!

Photo Outtakes from Issue 19

Tze Chun by Gabriela Herman

Tze Chun portrait by Gabriela Herman



I'm very excited to showcase photography by some dedicated and talented contributors in our upcoming issue. We consider so many worthy images, I wish we had twice as much space to print photos in the magazine. Though it's certainly not as sexy as handling the semi-glossy spreads of the real thing, luckily, I can share outtakes with you on the blog. These images will see the light of day! They certainly didn't get cut because they weren't compelling or captivating -- often times we've got to nix the favorites. Editing post-shoot is one of the toughest parts of the job. Which images tell the story, express the tone, or enhance the writers' words not only beautifully, but concisely and clearly?

Photos from PAX: Gamer Heaven

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is one huge gamer celebration. Taking place every Labor Day weekend since 2005 in Bellevue, WA, PAX is the convention in the US representing
the gaming community. It's a fast growing community at that. Nearly 61,000 attended in 2009,
up from 55,000 last year, with an eyeball estimate of at least a quarter of attendees being Asian. Convention attendee and volunteer Albert Park from Berkeley, CA, sent in his event photos with some captions and commentary. It's a fascinating glimpse into a world of passionate people.

Teru Kuwayama - War Photographer and Lightstalker

Picture 4.jpgTeru Kuwayama sounds like a badass human. While he doesn't consider himself a war photographer and points out that the battlefields of today are more akin to "battlespaces" that encompass information wars, I'd say it takes a special breed to run around in a bulletproof vest in a war-torn country, armed with a plastic toy camera instead of a rifle.

Photographer Sebastian Kim's Coachella Portraits: Rock Candy

skim2.jpgAs Hyphen's new director of photography, I'll be working to bring
you some great visuals -- showcasing work from emerging and established
photographers in our print magazine. But I'll also be introducing you to
photo-related bits of interest through the blog. In my mind there is no better or more
elegant way to communicate a story than through photography. I'm looking forward to sharing talented photographers and the stories they capture with you.

I was really struck by Sebastian Kim's portraits of musicians featured in T Magazine, the style magazine of the New York Times. He photographed his series Rock Candy at this year's Coachella music festival, getting the likes of both emerging talents (Rye Rye) and pop icons (Madonna) to pose for him. There is such varied but beautiful mood and intensity to these
photos.