Refugee Project Providence, RI 1986

During my senior year, I moved eventually into their communities so that
I could spend more time photographing not only what was happening in the
streets, but also in their homes. They accepted me with ease as one of
their neighbors and not as a strange photographer. So for my senior thesis
show, instead of having a typical gallery setting exhibition, I rented a
Cambodian’s apartment and placed hundreds of large and small photographs
and even set up an installation piece called Cambodian Refugee Camp in
Thailand. I was inspired to do my final show in a residential setting for
several reasons: I wanted the community to come and see the pictures
of themselves and I wanted others to actually witness the richness of the
neighborhood that we often neglect.

Refugees came everyday, admiring the photographs, pointing to the people
they knew, and asking me if I could give them a print of their loved ones.
And to my total surprise, the installation piece of Thailand Camp, a wall to wall
print of refugee camp sites with portraits of refugees behind a wired fence
became a shrine - a place to cry over their past grief. Families came and told
their younger ones of relatives who might be at the camp. Some began to place
letters and photographs right on to the wooden columns that were holding the
barbed wire fence. One monk placed a hand colored photograph taken
in front of Angkor Wat. I still cherish that photograph, and lament that nothing
could top that exhibition to this day.