Chapter 02
The Assignment That Started Everything
The Bronx assignment
In the fall of 2025, I started a project documenting aging Vietnamese clergy in the Bronx. I thought I was making a quiet series about displacement, faith, and old men who had seen too much.
One of my subjects was Father Phúc. He was eighty-eight years old, his hands trembled, but his eyes were sharp. He didn't want to talk about the war. But when he saw my camera, he said: “I knew a photographer once. He vanished.”