Long Island City

Long Island City is a photography series documenting the area of Long Island City and Hunters Point in Queens, New York. The project takes a close look on the traces of early industrialization of the area, in which has been gradually fading away as newer middle-class communities emerge and gentrify the neighborhood since the early 2000s, in addition to the documentation of the remaining or emerging local businesses involved in this long lasting yet fast-moving process. City archives of rezoning proposals, press materials regarding real estates, and other related historical sources are being researched and investigated, offering the fundamental perspectives of this project.

What initially motivated me to photograph Long Island City is this eager to learn about a new place – I have never moved in my life or lived at another place for an extended period of time. When arriving New York a few years ago, an expectation to feel insecure and struggled made me rather anxious to be at a completely unfamiliar space. However, there has been almost this trust being gradually built, Long Island City has kindly embraced me and allowed me to be a part of it. It’s my daily interactions and encounters with the people, the businesses, the streets, it brings me a sense of home as I realized almost everyone here were once foreigners. It is just that the people and the businesses relocated to this community at different times, and with this common ground, I found comfort indeed. Then, my curiosity on how Long Island City exists and why so many people have been choosing to live here kept getting greater, hence I could not resist but to go out and explore. To learn about Long Island City.

I have been intrigued by the contrary historical and industrial landscape existing simultaneously to the glass facades of the luxury apartments, office towers, restaurants, and many other recently erected structures over the last decade, on top of the remains of the old Long Island City – factories, warehouses, and indeed aerosol arts like the legendary site of 5Pointz on Jackson Avenue, now turned into a luxury rental apartment. The local businesses are also an essential element of the landscape as well as acting as the witnesses of the process of gentrification. Some of these businesses have been operating for decades and others as newcomers to the neighborhood. After all, my interaction with these places and their remarkable presence motivates me to include them hence bring together a compressive and topographical view of Long Island City. The project, ultimately, aims to preserve a stage in this process, like a “timeslice”, that portrays how the local environment has been changing in addition to how the local businesses have been coping, among many other gentrified communities in New York. (Archives: courtesy of Queens Public Library and New York Magazine.)

2022 - ongoing