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About Tiny Grains

Tiny Grains is a collection of photographs of the active participants in Manhattan’s Chinatown during the COVID–19 pandemic through the return to “normalcy.”

This venerable neighborhood, always in transition, has been long been plagued by injustice, underrepresentation, gentrification, and perceptions of foreignness. The crisis starting in 2020 heightened these issues. As a born-and-raised resident, I still feel their weight.

Instead of feeling helpless, I collaborate with the vibrant intergenerational community members, fervently photographing the denizens, shopkeepers, artists, and activists who are pushing forward the idea of Chinatown-for-Chinatown. Together, through mundane acts, arts, music, food, advocacy, and storytelling, we bear each other’s tragedies, keep each other safe, fight injustice, reclaim space, preserve traditions, honor our past, envision the future, laugh and cry, drink, sing songs for ourselves, and dance in the streets.

This aims to serve as a time capsule, preserving the history and experiences of our Chinatown, engaging in dialogue with other works made during the pandemic, and standing as a testament within Asian American history. The hope has been that Tiny Grains, subjective as it is, has become a part of that movement which is attempting to build a more responsive and responsible society.

Edward Cheng is a native New Yorker, freelance computer programmer, and seasoned globetrotting backpacker. As a photographer, he works on long-term projects documenting the Asian American experience in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, Día de los Muertos in Mexico, and Christian Holy Weeks and Easters around the world. Cheng is a teaching assistant and a fixture at the International Center of Photography; he regularly assists darkroom masters Steve Anchell, Brian Young, and Chuck Kelton. He takes his mezcal oaxaqueno neat, his coffee black, and his bed at three.