In Ha’s portraits, women sit together on the front stoop, fixing each other’s hair, resting against each other’s legs. They are undressed and draped in furs on a hardwood floor, counting cash, or dressed in floating sundresses in a courtyard garden, sipping tea. They are meeting the viewer with a direct stare, or ignoring them entirely. The photos feature the model’s hands prominently—pressed against a knee, wrapped around a landline phone. For Ha, fingernails represent strength and beauty, and the salon is a place for hardworking femmes to rest, indulge, and escape. The world she presents in her work is sensory and lush, gleaming cars and velvet dresses, lit by red light or direct sun and nothing in between. It’s power, glamor, pleasure—a dream, but almost within reach. Her photos invoke classic American imagery.

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