VOICE Image Collection 2020 | Voice Competition Finalist and Honorable Mention | Arizona Documentary Family Photographer
I have to admit that it is an extremely exciting feeling to receive the Click magazine in the mail box with one of my own images published and my name mentioned a couple of times. I participated in the VOICE photo contest this year and I had one image selected to be included in the final collection under the Broken Reality category and one image as an honorable mention in the Her category.
Voice is an international photography collection created entirely by women.
Through each photographer's unique lens, the Voice Competition & Collection provides a platform for real women to share real stories. With almost 40,000 images entered annually, Voice is one of the most powerful visual documentations by, of, and for women around the world.
#SEEHERVOICE
2020 has not been easy in many ways and it pushed me into a dark corner that I’ve never been in before. Coming into 2020, I started the year with high spirit—I had a grand plan about life and about my photography. Knowing that we are going to visit China, I had a huge list of ideas for the images that I would like to make. I also was rather hopeful that if I got to get some of those ideal photos, I could enter the images to some contests to win. However, soon after we arrived in China, Wuhan my hometown to be exact, we went in lockdown mode. Looking back now, I was absolutely consumed in anxiety and disbelief. The only thing I could have focused on was trying to survive—being safe from the virus as well as not having a mental breakdown. I had no desire to pick up my camera most of the days and I only took photos because I committed myself to this 365 project to take at least one photo a day with my big girl camera. So many days, I literally had one click, literally one click for the sake of pressing that shutter at least once that day. Because I was so distracted by all the noises around me, and was still so hang up on my to-shoot list, I missed so many shots that would have been much more valuable to me and my family than winning any award. Then all a sudden, we were talking about being evacuated back to the US. The whole evacuation process was a grueling experience itself and that is another story for another day. When we were finally aboard on the flight out of Wuhan, the epicenter at the moment, we had already spent 12 hours in a freezing cold closed off airport going through all the health screenings and security checks. I had been wearing my baby and standing up and walking for 12 hours. My two older kids had crashed to the point that they were totally dead asleep and my husband and I had to carry them. But we were just glad that we were finally aboard, as a whole family, heading out of the epicenter.
Our evacuation plane was a cargo plane retrofitted with temporary seats. There was no overhead bins for luggage and we were sat together in a row of 6 connected seats with another person outside of our family being on the isle seat. My husband told me that I had to take some photos. I knew that he was right. So I handed him our sleeping baby so I could pull my camera bag out from under the pile of bags under the seat. I took a total of 7 photos and I put away my camera.
The people in hazmat suits were all embassy workers and they were doing their last checks before we took off. They shouted through a hand-held speaker:”Let’s get you guys home! We are in this together and we will get you home safely!” Little did we know that after this 12-hour leg of international flight, we still had two connection flights with long layovers in between before we got to our quarantine center. Little did we know that we would only find ourselves in a worse pandemic situation soon after we were discharged. Little did we know that how much this whole experience would shake my identity from the core.
This image has caused huge waves because this is just not something you see every day. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if the US has ever done an evacuation from China in recent histories, let alone coming right out from my home town. While I am extremely proud of this image I took and glad that this image has started many valuable conversations, I equally hated this image because it took away all the attention from the images that meant a whole lot more to me personally. I started to seriously doubt my ability as a photographer to make great images without the help of an epic historical moment such as this. I started to feel that I didn’t deserve any of the praises and awards because I was purely lucky and I should have worked harder. I started to question whether what I held dear to my heart—all the other images from my day to day life—actually had any value.
We often talk about imposter syndromes or calling ourselves our own worst critics, but this has been on a whole different level for me. Somehow, I could not get myself out of this dungeon. I did not want to look at any of the photos I took in China this year or even many of the photos I took later during this year.
Amongst all the internal whirlwind about photography, and the real craziness of life, I stumbled upon the VOICE competition.
Yes, I stumbled upon it. I can’t even remember how I found out about it now. I had no idea how big of a deal it was. Each participant could submit 3 images into each of the 13 categories of the contest for free and you could submit additional entries. I picked a few images, submitted and called it good. I forgot about the contest even until I got to know that they were going to stream the critique/picking for the semi-finalists. I always love watching critiques so I watched the streaming and to my surprise, I actually saw two of my images making through to the semi-finalist round. I could not believe it!
I first shared this image on Jan 31st on Instagram when we were in Wuhan because I had not cooked for 2 weeks. We had a feast every day--three meals a day for us 7 people. My mom cooked all these meals.
Two weeks later, my family was already evacuated back to the US leaving my parents behind in China. During quarantine, our meals were provided. We were very well taken care of but the food was definitely nothing fancy. We would FaceTime my parents as a daily check-in to see if they are still safe and healthy and with time difference, it worked the best to call during our breakfast time, close to midnight China time. Then I started to notice that my mom and dad would say that the seemingly only ok food we were having were making them hungry but they had to calculate how many eggs they could eat each week so they didn't have to go shopping often. Or my mom would jokingly say that we packed away all the late night snacks so my dad should just go drink another cup of water. That's when I realized that my mom literally used up all their good food storage to spoil us while we were there and packed all the snacks they had for our trip back leaving nothing for themselves after we left. And that's the moment when I was so glad that I took this image. That's the moment when this image changed from a picture of my mother cooking to simply "Mama".
Having this image recognized as an honorable mention award, top 2% among all the 40,000 international submissions, meant a lot to me. When I shared the evolved story about this image, so many people from all over the places reached out to me telling me that this image and the story had brought tears to their eyes. It is absolutely heart warming for me to hear that people can resonate with my stories. With this image, I was finally pulled out of that dungeon and was finally peaceful about the fact that I did take important and good photos. After all, I am telling important stories.
It took quite some friends, who have no problem telling me how much some of my photos suck, looking in my eyes and telling me that I did a good job and I should be proud of my work, and having my photo published in a major photography magazine for me to get over this major internal obstacle this year and to move on. I am really proud of myself for what I had achieved this year, having made awesome photos and more importantly, overcoming my own fears and doubts.
While it will forever be one of my deepest regrets that I missed some of the shots when I was in China that I know I would never be able to make up for, I now know that what matters is the next shot I take rather than the ones I missed. While I am still far far from where I would like to be eventually, I am really happy about my growth and I can’t wait to keep learning and keep shooting and keep telling stories.
