Freestyle Academy proudly presents

Citizen: A Senior Listener Lyric Photographic Diptych by Carly Wang (2017)

For this project, I interviewed a Jewish Asian American and wanted to get their perspective on belonging to the intersection of two overlooked minorities. From the interview, I gathered that they often felt out of place in any group where everyone was one race. Among Asian Americans, they felt too Jewish. Among Jewish Americans, they felt too Asian. Many people also don’t realize that they are Jewish as they appear Asian, and forget to address that aspect of them. In synagogue, this person and their family stand out. There is not much racism or discrimination towards them, but they feel eyes on them simply because they are different. I tried to capture this feeling of being aware of oneself more than one should be by taking a picture of someone looking into a reflection of themself. To do this, I went to downtown Palo Alto and stood across the street from a reflective shop window, waiting for someone to pass by and look at their own reflection.

To create the diptych, I used both Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I edited my photo in Photoshop using masking and layers, which was a new skill for me. I see myself using these skills in the future whenever I edit any photo. After that, I used Illustrator to create an outline of the woman, the focus of my diptych. I selected a passage from my English listener lyric essay assignment and had it repeat within the outline. I then transferred this from Illustrator to Photoshop, where I adjusted the canvas size to place the image and the text side by side for my final diptych.
Visitors 983