Picturing Forgotten Filipinos: Family Photographs Resisting U.S. Colonial Amnesia

The history of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines has led to the diasporic condition of U.S. colonial amnesia and systematic forgetting of history and its impact on the Filipinx community. With memories left unrecorded and voices of immigrants silenced, the Filipinx people have been considered lost to history. In this research, I will investigate the relationship between U.S. colonialism and imperialism in the Philippines and the experiences of Filipinx immigration to the U.S. through the lens of visual imagery. I will also be analyzing the affective power family photographs hold for the Filipinx community and how this is significant in pushing back against U.S. colonialism. Given that many of the experiences within the Filipinx diaspora in relation to the American Empire have been systematically forgotten and erased, my research question asks, how can family photographs of the Filipinx diaspora challenge and reinscribe harmful hegemonic U.S. colonial and imperial narratives of Filipinx subjectivities in America? Utilizing a combination of visual and feminist studies lenses, I will explore the ways family photographs taken of and by Filipinx people are powerful tools that build cultural memory and knowledge of Filipinx histories and subjectivities that have been attempted to be erased, forgotten, or misrepresented by the U.S. Empire. By utilizing a combination of semi-structured interviews and photo analysis as a form of visual storytelling, I argue that family photographs within the Filipinx diaspora reframe, challenge, and in certain instances resist hegemonic U.S. colonial and imperial narratives by holding memories of migration, loss, family belonging, and community across spatial and generational boundaries that have been attempted to be erased by the U.S. nation-state. The article based on this presentation is located here: https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/3431