I will take a street photography approach to document the various overlapping and juxtaposing cultures that reside in Koreatown by walking through several of the major streets including the area’s official borders, documenting vernacular images – images of everyday and common place life, signs, artifacts, and architecture seen from the point of view of the street and meeting people walking about on any given day. The following section will describe the ways I will document Koreatown’s overlapping cultures, providing several examples of similar projects by both social scientists and documentary style photographers. Social scientists, Georgio Curti, Zu Salim, and Vienne Vu, documented various Asian enclaves through Los Angeles using photography as a way to give recognition to the overlooked parts of these communities. They too wanted to affirm Los Angeles as a multilayered, multi-cultural landscape. Their aim was to affirm the quality of Los Angeles as a mosaic by providing “visual glimpses into a diasporic imagination that recognizes the diversity of diasporas and honors the different histories and memories” (Curti, Salim, and Vu, 2013). They …

One of the major problems to consider before proceeding on a project that uses photography as a means to document is the medium’s nature and its relation to human intention. The following section will compare and contrast the approaches of several documentary style photographers as a way to discuss the problems photography faces as a means for conveying information and giving representation to people and community. Susan Sontag argued that the industrialization of the camera democratizes all experiences by translating them into images (1977, p. 7). Even if photographers attempt to “mirror” reality, their approach is informed by an inescapable subjectivity. Simply by virtue of preference or taste, “photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects” (1977, p. 6). This is the nature of its democratic function. Sontag expounds on the breadth of photography through various examples of its uses. For the insecure or anxious, for example, the act or practice of taking pictures becomes a factor for its use and by implication, the meaning of the photograph. Sontag notes that many travelers overcome by …

For this documentary style photography project, I will focus on the multi-cultural environment of Koreatown, an inner-city, ethnic community representing at one level, a historical ethnic enclave, at another level, a global nexus of economic restructuring tied to South Korea, and even at another level, a non-transnational, real-local space for non-Korean minorities. The following section will describe the history of this fascinating space of identity practice and contest, and in what ways outside investment interests have become embedded into Koreatown’s local cultural mosaic. Early Koreatown Passage of the 1965 immigration act was the catalyst for the population growth that helped build the Koreatown where it is located today. However, earlier immigrants began to move to Los Angeles as early as the beginning of the century. The first wave of 7,400 immigrants arrived to the states – most in Hawaii – between the years of 1903 and 1905 to work as sugar cane laborers (Kang, 2013). While most Korean immigrants came to Hawaii, some arrived in Los Angeles by 1904. These immigrants started the first Korean …