Growing up, I got on social media pretty early. Facebook had just removed its restriction
to only .edu email addresses. The minimum age was 12 years old — I hopped on that
immediately. Since then, I posted everything on Facebook. Throughout my childhood, I always had a camera, and I captured absolutely everything. My pre-teen Facebook profile contains documentation comprehensive enough to rival FBI profiles. It is the source of every
embarrassing throwback Happy Birthday post, year after year. If you grew up with me, and you want to reminisce, that is the destination.
The “constantly taking pictures” habit of course translated into my BFA. I am a
Photography major at the Rhode Island School of Design. This series is titled “My Life in
Teenager Facebook Posts”. It showcases many aspects of my intersectional identity as I grew up in a Chinese immigrant household in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, a French Immersion elementary school, and a very multicultural high school with a specialized enriched academic program. Subjects include me as a toddler in my backyard, me at a terribly awkward teen dance, me at a Detroit Tiger’s game, and me in a group picture with my ninth grade homeroom class where there are a total of three white students. A common motif is photographs of myself through the ages of 6 to 17 at various Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Moon Festival galas, performing with my Chinese dance group taught by my mom. As an iconic dance group in the Chinese Association of Greater Windsor, I feel that this part of my life is an important indicator of my intersectional identity as a first generation immigrant child in a Western city. A community came together to celebrate our traditions twice a year.
