Reach High: A Senior Listener Lyric Photographic Diptych by Hannah Pang (2017)

My lyrical essay titled “Sprig” represents the emotions and growth that comes with immigrating from a foreign country during your early teen years. I learned from my interview subject that one truly grows from hardship and being vulnerable in new environments. They told me they had a strong belief the message: no matter what, America still gives more opportunity than my own home country. I chose the short passage of “reach higher than the trees held at home” because it stuck out to my interviewee and also had a positive connotation. I believe this passage gave me a lot of freedom when shooting the street photography. I mainly focused on children and older people because they represent the extreme ages in life. My interviewee felt that no matter your age, everyone can still grow and expand their knowledge. In the end I chose a photo of an older florist at the farmer’s market. When I was taking the photo, he was packaging flowers for a recently immigrated Indian couple and I overheard his own immigration story. This really resonated with me and became a driving force that correlated to my chosen passage.

I used Photoshop’s brush tool with a very low opacity red color to colorize the hat, after I made it black and white. Then I chose a blocky, fun text to juxtapose a fresh looking font with a more traditional photo as well as bring life and movement to the words. I used Photoshop to place my text as well, making each word its own transformed warp and adjusted them to fit into the shape of the hat. Furthermore, I made the word ‘held’ gray because I wanted to show depth. I think this composition supports my vision of unifying themes of old and young aesthetically.