My partner and I are freelance artists and we were fortunate enough to have wrapped on a couple commissioned projects prior to the Michigan outbreak and subsequent stay at home order, but we are obviously still anxious and concerned about future work as bills keep coming in. Coupled with that anxiety is a sense of loneliness that lingers after every task-force briefing, after every text conversation, and in the silence of every Zoom call. We miss our friends and families; we miss going to concerts and bars; we miss going on double-dates with our friends at new restaurants; but most of all we miss our old routine. We miss the freedom that we had, but we realize that this quarantine isn’t for punishment, but for protection. Above all else, it is important to protect ourselves and the ones we love by not risking the spread of infection and so we choose to stay home. It is in this choice that we are finding the strength to persevere and stay hopeful.

The power to choose has been the biggest motivation for me as I create work during this quarantine. I can either choose to sit and watch Netflix, or I can choose to create an image about what I’m feeling or thinking. Sometimes, Netflix wins when I’m feeling too distant; but, there’s currently so much going on in the world that in order to process any of it I have to create work. Right now, I feel that many people are living in a state of limbo where they aren’t sure what is coming and they’re not quite sure how this even happened. In some of my images, I use fire as an element to represent limbo because it can simultaneously represent creation/destruction or purification/corruption. The intensity and shape of fire can also connote certain moods or feelings. For instance, if the fire is small and flickering like a candle then it could represent restraint, fear, or withdrawal; in contrast, if the flames are strong and roaring this might convey passion, anger, or consumption. It’s dynamic and I found that to be interesting as a visual element. In other images, smoke and liquids are used because they are elements that interact with or derive from fire - smoke is a signal and liquids will either feed or extinguish the fire.

More recently, I created an image that is directly inspired by an article from the NYT called “The Slur I Never Expected to Hear in 2020” by Cathy Park Hong where Hong discusses the recent surge of racism against Asian-Americans due to the coronavirus. As an Asian-American, I deeply identified with the personal anecdotes that she chose to share within the article and immediately needed to create an image inspired by passages from her text along with my personal experiences with racism. The best way I can describe it is it’s often a silent kind of racism. One that makes you feel dirty like you’re covered in some kind of goo and all you want to do is melt away with it as it slides down your face or wash it off in the shower, but you can’t because you can’t show that it’s getting to you. Because you hope that if you play it off and have thick skin then maybe the racism will just go away. Sometimes it does; but it doesn’t mean that it never happened. To quote Hong, “racism never disappears but adapts to new circumstances when old strains rise from the dark vaults of American history.”

A Note from Mike Belleme of Six Feet: I met Jeen back in 2018 when I was a reviewer for Chico Portfolio Review in Montana and Jeen was a participant. Of all of the amazing and talented participants, I connected with Jeen’s work most deeply and wanted to speak a bit about what made his work stand out to me. The truth is that I’m not all that interested in photography as a craft. I’m interested in people and in the world that we live in. I’m interested in genuine connection and using the camera as a tool to facilitate connection and give a voice. By this metric, Jeen’s work is very successful. His empathy, sincerity and humanity are imprinted in his images. Through my own empathy, I feel and care about what he cares about. This movement of emotional energy through images from one person to the next is the power of photography, but it can not be faked or manufactured. There is no formula for it. That being said, Jeen was generous enough to share a bit of behind the scenes imagery to give us a little peak into his process.

Hwa-Jeen Na is a portrait photographer and film director based in Michigan. His projects focus on exploring definitions of identity through personal anecdotes and cultural influences. His work has been featured in several Michigan print and digital media outlets namely ArtPrize, The Detroit Free Press, and MLive. He has shown work at the Grand Rapids Museum of Art (GRAM) in their 2018 ArtPrize Collection and the 2018 Pantone Color of the Year Show at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts (UICA). Online features of his work can be found on Booooooom.com, Colossal, The Fader, and Billboard.

Below is a selection of Hwa-Jeen Na’s project, As Much Heaven as Earth addressing suicide and the question of “why we stay” in the LGBTQ community in Western Michigan.

Hwa-Jeen Na: Images from Quarantine