By Lisa Thibodeau
As film photographer Christina Ung matured, so did her work. What began as a fun hobby grew into a passion for documenting social justice issues and focusing on marginalized groups. “I dipped my toes into protest photography by going to the women’s marches and Black women’s marches,” she says.
It wasn’t always comfortable, because she felt she was an amateur, but she gained valuable skills. “I was really anxious because I felt I didn’t belong, but I learned to say, hey, can I take your photo?”
Ung, who was born and raised in South Sacramento, was first introduced to film in a photography class in 2013, which still had a dark room. But before that she recalls a digital camera she had as an 11-year-old. “I didn’t have a phone, but I had this little point-and-shoot and in the early 2000s that was really big. Taking pictures of my friends was really exciting for me,” she says.
Like other children of immigrants, Ung was tasked with translating for her parents — her mom is from China and her dad is a refugee from Vietnam. “I’m the first born so like a lot of eldest daughters I had to grow up early and help my parents navigate things like banking systems,” she says. She focused on her education and now works as a support specialist for Sierra College while also pursuing a doctorate of education at the University of San Francisco.
Along the way, photography emerged as a way for her to experience some of the childhood she lost. “As an adult I am trying to get back to my childhood self and [photography] is a way to play more now that I have a steady income and more time,” she says.
She began meeting up with fellow film enthusiasts through groups like the Broad Room Collective, which offers workshops and free art supplies, and Cameras and Coffee, a small group of film photographers. “We’ll meet at a cafe, grab coffee, then take photos of the environment — whatever happens to be there,” she says. Her work was recently shown at Timeless Thrills Gallery on J Street in East Sacramento in a group exhibition that explored spatial relationships, perspective and narrative.
Through these workshops she discovered that she enjoys preserving history. “My fixation for the last few years is the town of Locke,” she says, referencing the town in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta built by Chinese immigrants in 1915. “It’s all volunteer-run and people still live there but it’s falling apart.” Her goal is to preserve some of the small town via her Polaroid. “I like capturing these buildings that could easily change any day, but as long as I maintain the negative, that’s going to be forever,” she says.
New interests continue to surface for Ung as she honors her inner child by allowing herself time to play, but it’s the social commentaries and desire to expose injustice that remain her focus.
“The political is personal, as protest topics have impacted my family in the past and [issues] like citizenship rights and bodily autonomy affect me,” she says. “Photography is political to me. It’s preservation work in times of erasure.”