De-gentrifying My Parent’s Block

This photo project is part of my ongoing long term project, "(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park” (Dis)Placed in Sunset Park is an intimate look at the impact of accelerated gentrification in Sunset Park, an immigrant neighborhood in Brooklyn. It is a multimedia project that features photography, audio and videos of my family’s life in the predominantly Chinese and Latinx neighborhood.

"(Dis)Placed in Sunset Park" is a photo series that features stories of neighborhood residents affected by the breakneck changes around them in the Brooklyn immigrant neighborhood of Sunset Park. I realized that the project was missing a deeper look at my own family’s story. My parents settled in Sunset Park more than 40 years ago after emigrating from Hong Kong and China; I decided to shift the lens on my mother and father and their ongoing fight to hold on to their home. Through my own story and the stories of others, I hope to capture this culturally-rich, vibrant and diverse community that is being threatened by gentrification.

I follow a joint story of the relationship between my parents as they do everyday errands within the backdrop of the working-class immigrant neighborhood of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The neighborhood is facing and actively confronting accelerated displacement and gentrification, which makes itself so visible by the giant new structures right up against my family’s home.

My photographs were featured in En Foco’s Nueva Luz Magazine. CLICK HERE for more info.

Fort Hood Report Photography Project

With 3 years of outreach at Fort Hood; more than a thousand conversations with soldiers, veterans and their families; and 31 in-depth testimonials, Operation Recovery: Fort Hood Soldiers and Veterans Testify on the Right to Heal (or ‘the Fort Hood Testimony Report’) is a hard look at what the costs of more than a decade of war have had on one of the largest military community’s in the country.

In addition to the written testimonies, a select number of portraits were also taken of the military service members to accompany the report. Betty Yu along with Drake Logan took these photographs. This report is a  part of a larger collective organizing initiative, The Right to Heal.

The testimonies in the report offer a rare glimpse into the impact of multiple deployments, overmedication, stigma, as well as the subsequent increase in disciplinary infractions and discharges accompanying the military’s ‘drawdown’. And those don’t even begin to complete the picture. Accompanying the testimonials is a findings section highlighting trends identified and a recommendations section aimed squarely at the military and Congress.

Coming out of Iraq Veterans Against the War and Civilian Soldier Alliance’s campaignOperation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops, this report began through the efforts of active duty soldiers interviewing their peers to help highlight common stories in order to break a sense of isolation and hopefully to spread awareness of them. With the deep commitment and tireless work from our partners in Civilian Soldier Alliance, and Under the Hood Cafe & Outreach Center and the support of theInternational Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, this report is finally a reality. Please take the time to read some of these testimonials and reflect on them.