We Won't Move: A Living Archive | Episode 3

Artist, researcher, and educator Erina C. Alejo joins Michelle, Dara, and Kazumi to discuss A Hxstory of Renting, a photo book published by clamshell press featuring Erina's photography of the Excelsior, Mission, and South of Market documenting anti-displacement resilience in San Francisco, and writings by David Woo, Janet Delaney, and Jerome Reyes.

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Episode Notes

Artist, researcher, and educator Erina C. Alejo joins Michelle, Dara, and Kazumi to discuss A Hxstory of Renting, a photo book published by clamshell press featuring Erina’s photography of the Excelsior, Mission, and South of Market documenting anti-displacement resilience in San Francisco, and writings by David Woo, Janet Delaney, and Jerome Reyes. Erina shares how personal and collective histories are deeply rooted in place and the ways in which we work together, and the responsibility of being an artist who archives and uplifts these stories.

Full Episode Transcript

This Week’s Guest

San Francisco born and raised Erina C Alejo (b. 1991) is an artist, researcher and educator who works across decades and geographies to construct archives on labor, displacement, family and communal history. They administer grants for the Office of the Vice President for the Arts at Stanford University. Previously, Alejo worked as an after school program teacher at their alma mater, Galing Bata Bilingual Program at Bessie Carmichael Filipino Education Center Pre-K - 8. They serve on SOMA Pilipinas’s Arts and Culture Committee, whose current project is archiving Liwanag (1976-present). Alejo's current SFMOMA commission, My Ancestors Followed Me Here, is an outgrowth of their previous work on gentrification and community resilience. They are a third-generation San Francisco renter with family, documented through A Hxstory of Renting, recently published into a photo book by clamshell press.

Links

• Erina C. Alejo's Website

• Erina C. Alejo's book A Hxstory of Renting (clamshell press, 2020)

• KQED Interview "Sometimes, It Takes Time: Erina Alejo, the Third-Generation Renter)

• Book Review in Lens/cratch

• Further Reading about the history of photography and race: 

  • Little Manila is in the Heart by Dawn Bohulano Mabolo (Duke University Press, 2013)

  • Confrontations, Crossings, and Convergence 1899–1998: Photographs of the Philippines and the United States (UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 1998)

  • The Decolonized Eye: Filipino American Art and Performance by Sarita Echavez See (University of Minnesota, 2009)

  • Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois, Race, and Visual Culture by Shawn Michelle Smith (Duke University Press, 2004)

  • Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe by Tina M. Campt (Duke University Press, 2012)

  • Visual Currencies: Reflections on Native Photography edited by Henrietta Lidchi and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (National Museums Scotland, 2009)