My lyrical essay is meant to represent the lack of representation that Asian-Americans face in media. For my design project, I chose the quote, “they can’t quite figure out how to show us as real people” because I felt like it had lots of information to offer. “They” refers to Hollywood or creators of media, and the sentiment of the quote refers to how in the rare chances that Asian-Americans are portrayed in media, it’s often a massive misrepresentation of the culture and unique individuals who belong to it.
My photo is of two ladies I saw at a farmers market. They are both looking down at a phone which I thought was a perfect way to link the photograph to media consumption. The irony in the photo is that the women may not find films or famous people on their phones that look like them. Asian Americans face a severe lack of representation on any screens at all.
To edit my photo I took a series of different steps. To start, I made some modifications on the Camera Raw Filter. Second, I put a Gaussian Blur on the background so my two figures would be more pronounced. Lastly I applied two Gradient Maps to the photo. One, black and white, to the background, and another in a sepia tone, to the girls. For the text, I used the font Bradley Hand in bold and then I rasterized each word and then warped it.
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