'Sweat Shop Girl'

Within a block to three of where they filmed 'The Towering Inferno'

this lone Chinese girl stood at a doorway while her mother and many

other female Chinese immigrants on the border of San Francisco's

Chinatown assembled garments un a sweat shop in 1969-1970.

Now, decades later, the former fresh-off-the-boat-and-plane

immigrants are a powerful force in San Francisco and California

politics, own substantial portions of coveted districts of San

Francisco (Sunset District especially), and their offspring excel at the

highest, most coveted, and hardest to enter state universities such

as the superb Berkeley campus of the University of California (times

have changed!). Your ratings, critiques and observations are invited

and most welcome for this reworked shot showing more interior) If

you rate harshly, very critically, or wish to make a remark, please

submit a helpful and constructive comment; please share your

photographic knowledge to help improve my photography.

And they did not need "affirmative action" to get admitted -like some of their class mates. Could be a bit improved if you did not cut off the "7".

Students of Chinese descent have so overwhelmed the student body at Berkeley (University of California's No. 1 academic campus) that there is major unrest from the rest of the academic world about that. 

Yes, there was no 'affirmative action' and at the same time, their grandparents weren't slaves until 1865 or in the south (which is little known), 'Industrial Slaves' until Roosevelt ordered the sheriffs and big business to free all the imprisoned and enslaved black men then called NEGROES if you were polite and a host of other derogatory other names that caused me to cringe all my childhood and early adulthood freed in 1942 as an measure to defeat a potential Fifth Column in America.

For it is little known that a business in the south that wanted free or almost free labor until 1942 just called up the local sheriff and had charges trumped up on some unsuspecting (or even suspecting) black man, he was tried in kangaroo court composed of whites only or just a knowing judge, without a lawyer to defend him, and imprisoned at hard labor for the very people who put out the dragnet for new workers with the sheriff.

Everybody profited but this 'industrial slave' who often had to work at hard labor and frequently in chains.

This is NOT radical thinking but it's little known and was almost never documented until one white author did a thorough search of nearly all the county records of all the courthouses and detention facilities of nearly all the South, then published his work within the last decade.

Before you say it ain't so, I suggest you read the book on Industrial Slavery which surprised nearly everyone but those blacks who lived outside the South who had relatives who spent time as industrial slaves (or even died enslaved [ostensibly as prisoners] during that period).

Roosevelt (Franklin) was informed that those blacks were the one possible source of a 'Fifth Column' when he inquired about domestic weakness after Pearl Harbor, and with one domestic order, he caused those 'industrial slaves' to be free.  I believe almost all of them young enough went off to fight for their country.  Roosevelt's order killed two birds with one stone, but at that time, almost everybody wanted to fight for the USA against the Axis anyway.

And for good reason.

As to the seven in the photo, I long ago stopped kicking myself for cutting it off.

I could have stepped back, or if I had a 24 mm in my photo gear, should have switched, but I only had a 28 mm.  I also had no time to step back.  The scene disappeared; the child ran inside.

This photo taught me a valuable lesson about cutting off numbers that are part of a group and the same with letters spelling words that are recognizable.

You'll almost never see groups of letters forming words cut off in my photos, unless I'm forced to a choice.  It's something I've been ultra aware of since I saw this photo and its cut off '7'.

I learn from little things like that.

So, Meir you are right on both counts.

Happy reading if you decide to research 'industrial slavery' in the South.  Seems from my recent recollection, you were thereabouts about that time, based on a recent post of yours.

Interestingly, black people I have spoken to who had relatives, always knew it was dangerous to venture into the South before 1942, and not just because of lynchings, but because of false imprisonment.  It is part of the cultural history of America's blacks and part of the reason there is such ingrained mistrust nationwide of police.

I lived in NYC in Manhattan in the 1960s and part of the 1970s at times, and remember in Harlem where I tutored that cops never took a step to arrest numbers runners in Harlem operating right under their faces, or dope dealers who stole the lead plumbing drain pipes out of buildings to pay for their fixes, because they considered blacks 'inferior' and not deserving of their effort.

At the same time, and even later, the NY Times, finally caught almost the entire police force assigned to upper Manhattan's East Side (Harlem), in squad cars snoozing all night long with two or three squad cars with non sleeping officers posted as lookouts. 

Instead of patrolling Harlem, these cops worked day jobs and slept in their cars at night instead of doing their cop jobs in Harlem.  This didn't happen where white people lived.

They called this 'cooping'.  [No relation to C. Everett Koop' who just died a day or so ago.]

It was a major scandal, a little after the Serpico scandal, and it was solely against NYC's black population and was not in the South.

LA's cops have a horrible past reputation about their treatment of black citizens, and the same even now with the cops of Inglewood who have little hesitancy based on statistics for shooting blacks to death at an uncommon rate -- even unarmed ones.

[i've spent considerable time in Inglewood and know many there.]

I'm NO bleeding heart.  The man who shot me was a deranged man who happened not only to be black, but he was going to Washington, D.C. with his .38 caliber police special to avenge 'past racial injustices' in the riots that followed the  assassination of Martin Luther King and shot me while shooting another white man all with one bullet (a surprise twofer).

The day before I had photographed angry black riot aftermath to the King assassination in Harlem (see this portfolio).

I've seen it from all sides.

However, things ARE getting better - markedly so.  I can feel it on the street and in the way I'm treated as a white man with a camera in what once were fabulously dangerous areas, that no longer are.

Unhappily, black leaders have not embraced Bill Cosby and his put down of 'thug culture'.

That has been a sad state for people of color in the USA.

At the same time, have you ever seen a Russian or Ukrainian gansta rappa?

You gotta see that.

It's a real phenomenon.

We of the US export everything from our culture.

Thanks for the critique, Meir.

Right on.

john

John (Crosley)

John,

"If not today, . . . probably in her future!"

Moving photograph!

Regards always,

Jim j.

Good emotional portrait of a little girl! I like the  point of shooting. Girl looks more sad and more alone in another world for her.

I hadn't articulated it then but my practice (and philosophy) in shooting already was fully developed:

'Get all the interesting stuff in the frame keep all the uninteresting stuff outside the frame.'

So, with a 28mm lens, the choice, given that I was 'walking by' was to step back just a tad and stay at full body length or stretch a little bit, and shoot from highest viewpoint.

The high view point was less motivated by 'artistic considerations' than practical ones, I confess.

Thanks for an interesting comment.

john

John (Crosley)

Thanks for the kind compliment.

john

John (Crosley)

Yes, there is both emotion and transition in this photo.  The mommas in the background have left their homeland in search of a better life.

The girl likely has known only American life, but in a Chinese family context, meaning no American contacts unless she's school age, and for all it's a time of transition.

Amazingly, the thrift and industry of the majority of these immigrants allowed them all to thrive as an immigrant cohort and to have great power and wealth within my lifetime.  Another American immigrant success story!

It's been repeated over and over again for well beyond my lifetime, as immigrants have assimilated into the American culture.

In fact this little girl could indeed be the noted author Amy Tan, (or not), as the timing appears about right.  And the mothers in the background (or this little girl when she became a mom, the now famous 'Tiger Mothers' who drive their children to success.

Well thought out comment.

Thanks!

john

John (Crosley)

As I look through the critique section, I'm always looking for something of quality to attract me. (Sometimes difficult!) This frame oozes quality. From the angle of shooting, the tonal elements, historical value, subject matter; this picture flies within all these criterion.

All the best with future project and returning to past ones.

Regards

David

Thank you so very much for a completely self-contained and very flattering critique.

john

John (Crosley)

Another one that shows your excellent use of wide angles, John. Most people wouldn't have, probably, and most people would walk out with a more standard portrait of an angry-sad girl. And it'd be out of context and missing half the story you did manage to include.

There is something alienating about the perspective, but alienating in a good way - it moves out of the comfort zone, it's a deliberate different perspective. It forces the viewers into looking at it from a different angle - literally and figuratively. Which is a good thing, for sure. I do not feel this photo is judgemental, nor does it openly push me towards a certain opinion on what it shows (again, a good thing), but it does force me to think about what I am looking at, and to give a good moment of thought about that.

Your wide angles widen the view on the matter. And apart from very compelling photos, it's given me things to contemplate. Excellent work, thanks for waking us up.

My goal was to tell the story of why the little girl was standing in that particular doorway, and not just take a photo of a little girl in a doorway but to take a photo of a girl  whiling away her time while momma toiled.

In essence, it's just a photo of a girl AND her momma, and nothing more -- that's really all I knew at the time.  I didn't know which one was momma, but I knew she was in there regardless and probably in this photo.  And in a sense, momma was as anonymous and in the darkness as she appears in this photo, while the girl (representing the hope of youth?) is prominent.

Judging from the response of viewers and your wonderful critique I have succeeded in portraying the two well.  It may not be a pretty photo, but it's not an ugly one either, if one overlooks the sidewalk stain, probably from some sugary drink that someone has spilled, or some fruit discarded and walked on.

It's also a gritty photo in a way, but if you read my introduction and request for critique above, and my description of the outcome of immigrant Chinese in San Francisco's Chinatown, the political, cultural and economic success of these women and their children has been outstanding and instructive --  they and their offspring (like this child) have helped transform California and the US's idea of what immigrant culture is and should be with their collective success as Chinese Americans.

These women in effect are the 'Tiger Moms' and this girl, the offspring is one of the 'Tiger Children'.  By now, she almost certainly is a 'Tiger Mom' herself. 

I'd bet you.

Thanks for a very welcome and well written and thought out critique.

john

John (Crosley)

Peter, you comment on the high viewpoint.

I remind you that in the movies, a high viewpoint is used to mean 'universality' as opposed to 'the general' in which a low viewpoint is used.

Illustratively, when a movie often draws to a close, often in the final scene, from the specific ending, the camera will start to zoom out and up, and as it draws higher we see that not only is the story ending, but the actors in the story retake their place in the world.

This is an idle thought that I thought might be helpful in understanding why a high viewpoint seem to 'work' or at least how cinematographers often use a 'high viewpoint'.

john

John (Crosley)

A Berkeley Professor who formerly was involved in University of California Berkeley Admissions, on a NPR (formerly National Public Radio) program which I listened to today, on the subject of the Admissions of Chinese students in American universities made the following essential statement.

In Berkeley, Asian students (predomintly Chinese and Chinese Americans) comprise 50% of the student body.

Of those roughly 40 per cent are self-described on their paperwork as 'Asican or Chinese or Chinese-American, plus some foreign students; but researchers have discerned that the true number is 50 per cent, as some reporting of 'race' and 'ethnicity' appears to be voluntary, and in some cases, especially those involving adoptive children, or cases with traditional American names, national origin and race could not be discerned from applications and applicatants deliberately were disguising their race from their applications.

The Chinese race/national origin (heritage) apparently does not hurt their chances of gaining admission to Berkeley, as the state has a straightforward policy of admitting the best students including those from the state, and the state has a huge population of immigrants and immigrant children and/or descendants (racial Chinese but American grown).

However, in many private schools with huge applicant pools in the Eastern United States, (Brown, Harvard, Columbia among the  Ivys were mentioned by one program participant who worked for two of them and another worked for the third),  suggested that Chinese somehow are underrepresented based on 'achievements' though not on their ranks in the population which is about five per cent nationally, and exceeds that in each institution's student body.

However, as I learned when I applied as an Oregonian to Ivy League schools, diversity means something, and it is a goal of too many Tiger Mothers (Chinese Mothers who push their kids to achieve) that their offspring go to great schools, then medical school, and so there are large pools of high-achieving applicants with the same goals and less diversity among those applicant pools.

Essentially too many 'look alike' to Admissions officers -- none stand out, despite super high achievement.  Also, many have concentrated solely on academics and seem under-represented in social categories, though that is changing for American-borns of Chinese and/or Asian ethnicity.

I know I added something to the Columbia College Community through being an Oregon born student; I represented a unique viewpont.

Other students honestly wanted to know if there really were still 'wagon trains', and if people still carried six shooters. 

Honestly! 

I was not the top student or even anywhere near the top academically, but I achieved prominence on campus.

For two years I was a special assistant to a University Vice President.  As such I traveled with famous faculty members who to most people were just names on New York Times Book Review of Books and Best Seller academic books -- star faculty members from a university loaded with star faculty (many were graduate faculty with 25,000 graduate student; I was from the university's roots, the undergraduate college with less than 4,000 students (all males then) which was the mainstay of the entire university's foundation -- it's main reason for being before it became a giant of post-graduate education.

I traveled with world famous philosophers, literary giants, diplomats, economists, and people whose names were giants in academics and sometimes well known names in the news . . . . including a former and future Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (Arthur Burns) and such literary luminaries as Lionel Trilling and Jacques Barzun -- not household names, but giants in their fields -- to some, almost godlike, and I was a mere student, with a great student job, where I could travel sometimes with these men and learn from them as we traveled.

We traveled all over America, often during class week when we traveled to giant events in which these people were featured speakers and I was the assistant to the vice president host.  We traveled by jet to far away places such as San Francisco, Minneapolis, Houston and by limousine weekly for a month to nearby Connecticut.

I also later assisted a Peabody Award winning radio broadcaster in one student job for a cultural radio station (WRVR-FM), New York's finest, as his assistant, and learned broadcasting as a result.

I worked on the President's Commission on Civil Disorder, earning $18 an hour when the minimum wage was $2.75 an hour and they asked me to quit school to continue my work.  I learned about journalism and race relations vis a vis the press in that job, in analyzing how the print and broadcast press handled its delicate job of reporting race relations.

It was ideal training for journalism, since I never studied journalism.

I interviewed as my studies the head of the Rockefeller Foundation; simply for class work.  I learned secrets never told anyone about the successes and failure of the Green Revolution then underway in India.

I spoke before an International Marketing Association (while a student) to 1,5000 top retail executives including retail chain presidents about one aspect of a growing field of mass marketing.  I was one of four featured speakers.  I was then an expert then on mass marketing/retail sales -- an odd side expertise, from some work I had done.  I used to speak with Sam Walton (Wal Mart) often twice a week. (We never met in person)

I also rode EVERY MILE of New York's incredible subway system, and went to obscure places in each of five boroughs of the city, including some very dangerous ones, photographed the Martin Luther King race riot aftermath in Harlem, tutored in Harlem, photographed the Columbia student takeover riot and police sweep riot) and got my start in journalism that way.

I was shot on a train in Trenton, New Jersey as we pulled into the Trenton Station and almost lost my leg, which after a long recuperation was strong and good as new.

I also appeared on a TV game show: 'I Guess' with Bill Cullen,, whom I met in the men's room at NBC, in the next urinal, doing what men do at such places.

I lived most of my freshman year at Vassar College near Poughkeepsie, about 72 miles away, because that was where my girlfriend lived and studied -- three days of seven days a week.  Basically I went part time (four days) to boy's school, and three days to girls school (Vassar).

I dated a Jewish woman in Brownsville, Brooklyn, whose parents lived through World War II hiding in an attic hidden by sympathizers, and as I walked her home once at 3:00 a.m. remember seeing a penlight inside a small business -- it was being burglarized.  

On the way home just before dawn after spending time at her room while her parents snoozed fitfully (and noisily) and we kissed enthusiastically, remember on the opposite elevated (subway) platform seeing a man and another man and then the reflection off a small piece of metal which I knew to be a knife.  Sure enough there was a knifing on the opposite platform that night, and I had witnessed it.

There was nothing I could do; it happened quickly, far away and across depressed electrified tracks; and I was unarmed.

Life was interesting.

Columbia admitted me I think because I was from Oregon, had good enough scores, academics, sports and extracurricular activities and did spectacularly well on the 'personal interview' conducted in Oregon.

My interviewer liked me; he KNEW I would take best advantage of Columbia and in return knew that Columbia would have a better student body because I attended.

And I was a well known person on campus -- well recognized and acquainted though I did not seek recognition.

All ended with student riots and left wing anti-war demonstrators who arrived from all over the Northeast to participate, which shut down the university my senior year (I returned for two years part time to finish out a few classes five years later, then to law school on the West Coast).

Columbia made a bet on an intangible, which is what Admissions people do.

They look for people who will take advantage of their institution to the fullest.

And add an indefinable something to the institution in the  process.

I did that I think.

In spades.

Everyone admitted to such schools Admissions assume is easily good enough to graduate, and the Columbia College makes sure it will try to graduate everyone, even if the student takes a hiatus, because their admission standards are so demanding.

I learned to THINK at Columbia.

However I did NOT learn to write at Columbia.  My writing was unclear and muddled when I left.  A University may be the worst possible place to learn to write clearly.

After two days at Associated Press, my writing was transformed.  I became a clear, easy writer, who could communicate with almost anyone ab