Filipino American Navy
A project documenting—through the constraints of formal portraiture and views of domestic interiors—the tangible present and photographic pasts of Filipino-Americans who served in the U.S. Navy.
My father and younger brother served in the Navy. I took many of these photos beginning in 2011 and they mostly stayed put on my hard drive. In April and May of 2020, during quarantine and against the backdrop of stories detailing increased anti-Asian resentment and violence, I returned to these images, finally gave them an edit, and am presenting them here as evidence of one of the many ways to picture a life made in America.
I intend to find a way to work with others and continue making more images, complicating, expanding, and sharing these stories—and the international tangle of cultural and historical contexts that mark them—when things return.
Puyungan’s Legacy
An article by Rudy D. Liporada for Positively Filipino magazine, detailing some of the personal, and larger historical forces, surrounding Ignacio “Puyungan” Olosan, the first person from the Philippines to enlist in the US Navy.
“Puyungan walked 15 miles from La Trinidad to Camp John Hay in Baguio City (it would have taken him less than two hours then) to enlist in the US Navy. He was accepted. Years later, he would be in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed, ushering WWII in the Pacific.”
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