Japanese photographer explores the ‘in-between place’ occupied by Asian-Americans in California

Japanese-Latino photographer Ricardo Nagaoka was curious about what he calls the “in-between place” occupied by Asian-Americans living in the United States. To find out more, Nagaoka spent 10 days photograph­ing his subjects in California – home to one of the largest populations of Asian-Americans in the US – as part of a project with the British Journal of Photo­graphy. The resulting series is titled Gold Mountain.

“Sometimes you identify more with your American culture, sometimes you find solace in your heritage,” says the Portland, Oregon-based photographer.

For the project, Nagaoka photographed people from a variety of backgrounds, asking his subjects how they feel they are repre­sented in mainstream media. Many of those portrayed said the lack of Asian role models in US popular culture had a significant effect on their identity as a child and young adult.

“[In the media] Asian-Americans are rarely depicted,” Nagaoka says. “And when we are, we are often forced into these clichéd tropes: the nerdy Asian, the submissive Asian, the exotic Asian. I am looking to create a genuine representation.”

It is a fair point. A study conducted by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, published in July, found that among the top 1,100 films released between 2007 and 2017, Asian actors made up just 6.3 per cent of all roles.

Television isn’t much better. “Tokens on the Small Screen”, a multi-university study of US prime-time shows, found that 155 of the 242 programmes that aired during the 2015-16 season did not have AAPIs (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) as series regulars. The researchers concluded that although the past 10 years have seen more opportunities for AAPI actors in US television, their characters remain margin­alised and tokenised.