I met the Man From Canton in Chinatown. He explained that Chinese people had been forced to divide themselves from white Australia as a matter of protection from hate crimes in the 1900s. There were no English signs and posters surrounding the Chinatown streets, no night markets where people of all walks of life gathered to watch live performances and eat a wide range of culturally diverse foods, and there was definitely no way a white photographer from the suburbs could walk through streets of Haymarket on his camera at 6:30 in the morning.
So to the Man From Canton I say thank you. As a photographer I always try to capture the essence of a location, but I am not even close to understanding this one. I will always be a visitor, but I need to be more aware of the experiences of the people and buildings I am capturing on camera.
