If A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words …
This story was originally e-mailed in The Slant on June 30, 2017.

… then 80 of ‘em are worth eight years of hard work, 26 cities in 20 states, and 7,500 miles of travel.

That’s what Bay Area photographer Mia Nakano discovered in 2009. She’d spent years taking portraits in Nepal, but Nakano wanted to do a project that aligned more closely with her identity as an openly queer media maker.

So she launched the Visibility Project, a photography and documentation project focused on the queer Asian Pacific Islander women, trans, and gender non-conforming community.

That’s where the 7,500 miles come in.

Hope she had a This American Life backlog
Right? On June 2, Nakano released Visible Resilience, a book of 80 portraits of participants throughout her eight years of travel, from all over the country. She even developed an educational curriculum, teaching queer Asian Pacific Islander history for students as young as 11.

Oh, and on the same day her book released, Nakano launched the Resilience Archives, a “digital history tour map” showcasing achievements in the Asian Pacific Islander LGBTQ community. ‘cos anyone can do just a book launch.

No rest for the wicked(ly talented)
Visitors to the digital project can scroll through a map and click through milestones in LGBTQ history, getting a digital “walking tour” through preserved workshops, film screenings and other memories.

(It’s almost entirely limited to San Francisco, but as it’s user-generated, anyone can add significant events to the map, so there’s potential to scale.)

After a standing-room-only exhibition in San Francisco, the Resilience Archives are headed to Oakland. But knowing Nakano, that’s probably the start of a long journey. Hope she wears compression socks.