“Sowing Rice with Salt” by Photographer Kyle Lui

A series exploring how immigration affects the relationship dynamics between generations by Chinese-American photographer Kyle Lui. Based in New York City, Lui’s work focuses on the intimacies and sutures within families and communities, with an emphasis on immigrant families, male friendship, and Manhattan’s Chinatown. “Sowing Rice with Salt” draws on themes of cultural difference and intergenerational relationships, particularly the impact of immigration on the younger generation. Using an archival image of an immigrant parent, Lui presents an interpretive recreation of the archival image with the child alongside the child’s written reflections on their relationship with their parent and ancestral culture.

“As a child of immigrants, I often weigh questions like: How can children of immigrants reconnect with a familial history and culture that they are spiritually, but less physically, connected to? How does history and culture get passed down through the generations despite the forces of assimilation? How do the children of immigrants cope with feelings of cultural loss?

Growing up, I felt isolated in my exploration of these questions and my coping with these losses. ‘Sowing Rice with Salt’ sheds light on the interconnected struggles of children of immigrants through exploring the most formative and intimate, yet often strained, relationship. By visually placing the child in the shoes of the past version of a parent, the adjacent images devise a visual bridge where the child can empathetically imagine their parent’s past, suturing the gaps which arise from diverse upbringings, traditions, and hardships across diasporic landing points.”

Check out more from Lui’s project below!