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Writing
Journal Entry edited 8/13/2025, 8:15PM
When I was planning my junior year of high school, I had a hard decision to make. I was obsessed with perfection and the idea of becoming this perfect young artist. It was between the AP class and beginners photography, and when I couldn’t made the decision for myself I went to my advisor for advice, which he then proceeded to immediately make the decision for me. Apparently, it was a no brainer. AP’s look better on paper if you take them earlier. No room for a ‘but’ or ‘what if’. It was finalized, I was pushed out of the odd glass cubicle, and I left internally freaking out.
At 16, I was a master of comparison, and growing up at a school around academically competitive peers made it difficult for me to feel confident in my own intelligence. So natually, I anxiously tried to prepare myself for this class like it was any other AP class with a lengthy exam. One day during lunch time, I marched into the art building, introduced myself to the teacher, and asked her how I could improve my skills for the class. I spent all summer shading spheres, cubes and cones. My wrists ached from stipling and cross hatching and all sorts of practice exercises.
On the first day of that class, I found myself feeling excited to be at my first “serious” art class. Everyone who was there wanted to be there. There was art on the walls, weird stains and strong smells. It was great.
As soon as we started working was when I started struggling the most. This class was the first time I had ever heard words like “breadth”. All I had in my toolbox were some 0.7 lead pencils, alcohol markers and a fucking dream.
My teacher gave lots of great critiques, all of which were hard to hear at first. I remembered her criticizing a watercolor painting I did of a Chinese opera woman’s head. She said
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At 16, I was a master of comparision and found myself entering that classroom feeling lost and inadequate. I was excited because this was my first “serious” art class. Everyone who was there wanted to be there. There was art on the walls and weird stains and strong smells.
i had not taken an art class since elementary school, and because i had only been doodling in my notebooks between all that time, i felt like such a fake. this class was the first time i had ever heard the words “breadth” and truthfully i had no real foundation to actually form my own portfolio. i had never even drawn a sphere. the friends i would make in that class were incredible illustrators and had already found their artistic voices. i compared myself to them and the other students often. they just were able to create these magical pieces, while i spent most of the year struggling to find confidence as an artist. the fear of embarassment and failure kept me in a box.
i was so afraid of not being good enough to the point where i was almost discouraging myself to create. for a good chunk of the year, i spent my time just doing work from other classes. perfectionism had driven me to avoid art completely, until one day it all just switched.
we began experiementing with collage.
even though the class was more self driven and much of the time was alloted for us to work individually to build our portfolios for the exam, she would allow us to take time away to try new mediums. collage was one of them. i still rememeber the experience of smelling rubber cement for the first time. the absolute luxury of being able to change your mind after glueing a clipping on one place and wanting it to move it to another. i had graduated from elmer’s invisible sticks, and began working like a true... rubber cementer. i was hooked.
we first got our intial clippings out of these old musty art history books, but one day my teacher dug around her supply closet and brought out this dusty storage box. when she opened it, it was filled to the top with old rave flyers and miscellenous cards from the 90s/2000s. i still remember my first initial thoughts: “holy shit. ms. f is so fucking cool.”. i spent that entire class just rummaging and collecting. i didn’t care that my fingers began to feel all puffy and swollen from decades old dust. this was when i became addicted to working with things i could directly touch.
later in the year, we started working with oil pastels and it was another match made in heaven! i loved the way it melted under my fingers. my final pieces submitted were all oil pastel on canvas. i loved loved loved it, and found myself working with through the end of the semester. and this sudden boost had basically got me to where i am today.
as i navigate through this big transition of my life (moving to a new city, starting grad school, taking CHARGE...), everything feels fresh and new. quite frankly, i feel like a baby learning how to walk again. you would think all the mental suffering endured during 4 years of undergrad would be enough...it is not. but i find comfort and solace in knowing that my younger self would be so proud of where i am today. that goes the same for you.
i know how it feels to be an imposter, i don’t think this feeling will ever end. but having worked with other artists who have felt/feel the same, it is validating to know that we all start somewhere. i look back at the work i made when i first started and while it’s not something i’m suuuuuper proud of, i appreciate it in the same way a mother appreciate’s their child’s kindergarten crafts. to me, my earliest work is an endearing record of growth and transformation.
it’s very easy for me to fall into a rut, face down, dark....wet....cold. artist block is a very real thing. when i’m facing a total loss of inspiration, i try to remind myself how far i’ve come. these images serve as a reminder that the inspiration has always been there. i just had to find the right ways to express it.
by no means do i think i am qualified at all to give advice but this list i made has helped me and it might help you:
- let it go or it will drag you
- no one can tell you who you can and can’t be
- being scared is normal
- you’re not defined by your skill or talent
- you’re not defined by the tools you use
- focus on your drive to create
- pretend like you already made it
- scream if it helps
Before I got into photography, I had a hobby of making music videos of my friends in middle school. I would film with my beated red canon powershot. It was integral for me to visualize the music I was hearing, which meant that my friends had to be the subjects. Eventually they got annoyed at how much I was sticking the camera in their faces, and maybe it was selfish of me not to care but we were little teens!!!!! I’m not gonna waste our time going into the should haves and the shouldn’ts. We look back at these videos now in a more nostalgic light. As terrible as they were, I’m glad that we have them to look back.
My interest in making music videos faded and I got into photography midway into high school. After being gifted a DSLR for my 17th birthday, I started practicing by taking photos as class historian. I continued until my senior year, when I began to take my photography more seriously and began investing my time shooting with film. I was taking an intro photography course that made me fell in love with darkroom processes. When covid had cut my senior year short and I had been forced to launch myself straight into adulthood, I found myself finding the most inspiration in my day to day life. And when there was nothing to do during the early days of the pandemic, all you could do safely was drive around the bay. So that’s what I did, and I always brought my camera.
A good handful of the images that I am proud of were taken during the pandemic. It’s weird to have come of age during that time, and no one really gave us the space to properly process that. My HS graduating class and I didn’t have our ceremony or prom, we never returned to campus after March 2020, and because travel had been largely restricted, most of us stayed in San Jose when we started college. Zoom college. It’s a whole fucking thing. But basically we all felt stuck. We hadn’t gotten the big final ceremonial close to our K-12 years, but we also didn’t have the experience of stepping foot on college campus for the first time. My images from 2020-2021 felt quite melancholy.
The subjects of my work picks up around 2022 when life began to move a bit faster. I shot everyone and everything. At this point in my life, my friends were playing shows, we were going to shows, and we were making art. For some of us, these were moments where it was our first time going out and having fun. My photographs became documentative of the life we were living. I knew in some way that we were going to want to look back at these when we’re old like raisins (which I am actually quite excited for....growing old is a privilege.!!!!).
As I continue to evolve, both as an artist and as human person, I see my photograhy continuing along that sort of documentative tone. I want to capture my life as it is and how it changes. I want my loved ones to see themselves in a different light. Despite all the buuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhlllllshiet happening right now in our fucked ass world, there are still moments in between that make living on this earth worth fighting for. I try to capture those moments.
But also sometimes I just shoot something bc flower=pretty. Or something just sticks out to me in a certain way... like “Wow i really like how that looks.”
Anyways, this was the medium I started out first. I was a heavy doodler as a young student, but didn’t have the connection (or discipline) to follow through to invest in some form of drawing or illustration. I grew up loving photos because it was how I got to know my family’s life back in Vietnam and how they lived before the war. They shot their lives as is; there are photographs of my aunts and uncles as children, playing in their neighborhoods with soldiers in the background. My late grandfather, floating in wide open lake. My grandmother, playing with my mother as a young infant.
In some ways, I feel like I’m continuing a generations long project. Photography as memory preservation. How will we be remembered when we are no longer around? Is there a way for us to control that?