Issue Nineteen

 

Convergence of Wishes was taken on a summer trip to visit my grandparents in Shanghai, where we soon visited a traditional temple. The photo serves as a glimpse into the unique practices Chinese temple-goers can partake in. Both young and elderly visitors attempt to balance spare change on their edges, a feat I’ve been told can increase the probability of fulfilling one’s wishes. Traveling with the intent of using a camera—be it a smartphone or DSLR—pushes me to seek out narrative components of an unfamiliar environment; I enjoy creating photos that I can return to, to relive the subjects’ emotions.

 

Sophia Zhao is a nineteen-year-old from Newark, Delaware currently studying at Yale University. Her creative work has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and is featured or forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, The Rising Phoenix, The Heritage Review, and elsewhere. She enjoys painting, poetry, and jasmine tea.

Star and Citrus are origami models I created and photographed. Each layer of paper is hidden to the naked eye, so I chose to backlight them to reveal the intricate layers of paper and the organic nature of it all. I only recently took up photography as a hobby, but as cliché as it is, my creative process has always been to capture the surroundings, the self, and the interaction between the two in all of my work. Whether it be through my photography or my writing, I am always trying to depict the world through my eyes in a way that I hope is refreshing to others.

 

Sung is a student from Pennsylvania who enjoys reading and writing in his free time. When he isn’t reading or writing, he makes his best attempts at photography. When he isn’t photographing, he is eating potato chips late at night (either sour cream & onion, or kettle-cooked).

 

This photo is taken after my sister’s last day of kindergarten. She just finished her online celebration and as a treat, we went to the beach as a family. Here, Maria dashes through shallow water in search of shells or a crab, having already forgotten about her momentous day. 

 

 

As someone with an eleven-year age difference with my sibling, I’ve found a chance to relive my own childhood by watching my younger sister. Watching her skip over the water on the beach or shake in excitement when she receives a new toy has been moving: trapped in the body of this sticky six-year-old is a sense of innocence and childhood bliss I so desperately try to capture on camera. In these photos, I want to show the impact that my younger sister has had on our family, and on me. 

In this photo, Maria is tired of walking all day and is beginning to whine but my mother refuses to carry her. As an act of defiance, she stops in the middle of the street and clutches my mother’s arm with her doll tucked underneath. I was struck by her expression in this frame, as instead of screaming or crying, she expresses pure affection and a desire for my mother to show her the same.

 

 

Elena Hlamenko is a rising senior at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. In her free time, Elena enjoys journaling, writing, and exploring the functions on her film camera, in addition to writing for her school newspaper, The Spectator. Her younger, six-year-old, sister is the inspiration behind most of her work. With an eleven-year age gap with her sister, Elena has started a long-term project to document the growth of her younger sister over the years.

 

Sundown in Kenyatta. A supplication to hope. A prayer to a future dreamed of. In the foreground, men talk after lifting something into a car boot–Nigerians are a hardworking people, despite governments that see them as nothing but as souvenirs of conquest, each leaving them worse and disillusioned than the last. This picture is a credo to a future where women are kings and the girl child has taken [been given] the proper position she deserves–that of relevance.

 Fanon Gawks at Grief is of a homeless mother and her three children. Heartbreaking. It took me a while before I got this shot and the most intriguing thing about it is that I wasn’t accosted by any of the hundreds of people using the sidewalk at that moment. Apropos of what I said earlier about the vast majority of Nigerians being averse to any form of picture-taking, it is obvious that there are certain issues of which they take no responsibility, issues about which they have no concern, issues which involve people about whom they do not care if they suffer whatever fate they believe a camera thrusts on its human subjects–a fate from which they shield themselves, and their churches. That homeless woman and her kids are nobody’s business, just like that train track, just like the hygiene of public spaces.

 This picture is one of which I wish more of the world to see.

 

 Of Rubbish and Railways shows a train track, a defunct one, passing through the market, and I see it as a testament to the mismanagement and irresponsibility of successive pseudo-democratic Nigerian governments, who render post-election lip service to a people who do not have environmental and ethical values to keep their marketplaces clean. Our country’s steady descent into disrepair has been [is being] facilitated by the collaborative efforts of the ruler and the ruled, the oppressor and the oppressed, government and citizen. And that is why I mourn her.

Onyekachi Iloh is an artist, photographer and writer from Nigeria who believes in art as a weapon of revolution. When he isn’t playing pretend guitar or dancing before mirrors, he reads poetry or mourns his country. He occasionally rants on mutemusings.home.blog and watches the world from the sidelines @demigodly_kachi

 

These pieces were created during quarantine and were very much influenced by my experience under lockdown in New York City. I stuck to the most basic materials – printer paper, a ball point pen, a number two pencil, and a few colored pencils – as a reflection of the limitations of our current situation. 

If You Only Looked Up and Ancestral Weight were both created using only printer paper and a number two pencil (though “If You Only Looked Up” has a touch of colored pencil in the top window). “If You Only Looked Up” tries to capture the feeling of being trapped indoors and searching for that lifesaving, almost angelic connection to the outside world. I created “Ancestral Weight” while looking at the African artwork in my house – mostly, masks and small figurines that I almost feel experienced quarantine with me.

 

Maya Renaud-Levine is a sophomore at Beacon High School, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She sings in a chorus, plays the piano, goes for long walks with friends, and inhales crime novels. Poetry and art are her favorite quarantine hobbies.