living memory
** Place is merely living memory. These streets and buildings would have no meaning if it weren’t for the people who made lives here. **
Did your ever used to go here? I remember coming here with my dad all the time. Growing up, I guess you can say my parents were suspicious of tap water so we had this water cooler in our kitchen for drinking water. I’m pretty sure dad got it from one of his furniture jobs off of Monterey Road. Anyway, he would take me with him every week to refill the family’s 5 gallon water jugs. Little kid with a bowl cut of black hair. Scrawny legs sticking out of shorts my mom sewed me. Scrawny arms sticking out a shirt with a hand drawn Batman symbol. Hands gripping a bootleg Batman action figure my parents got from the same shop at Lion Plaza that sold the bootleg Gundams and Power Rangers. Dad would start filling up the jugs, turning on the faucets one by one. I would have my face pressed up against the glass counter, debating which flavor ring pop I liked better: purple or green?
I totally remember that water place, it’s called Pure Water or something, it’s in that shopping center with the Senter foods. Damn isn’t it crazy how that place burned down? I’ll never forget that fish smell, I’ll never forget staring at rows and rows of fish and their dead eyes staring back at me. Looking back now, I think that really freaked me out and probably explains why I feel so uncomfortable holding or even touching fish. You know what, I went back to Lion Plaza a few months ago and it’s definitely not how I remembered it. I remember it being so busy with all the old heads playing chess in the courtyard, kids chasing each other with little plastic swords, families on the lookout for an empty table in the food court. But everything changes I guess.
Did your ever used to go here? I remember coming here with my dad all the time. Growing up, I guess you can say my parents were suspicious of tap water so we had this water cooler in our kitchen for drinking water. I’m pretty sure dad got it from one of his furniture jobs off of Monterey Road. Anyway, he would take me with him every week to refill the family’s 5 gallon water jugs. Little kid with a bowl cut of black hair. Scrawny legs sticking out of shorts my mom sewed me. Scrawny arms sticking out a shirt with a hand drawn Batman symbol. Hands gripping a bootleg Batman action figure my parents got from the same shop at Lion Plaza that sold the bootleg Gundams and Power Rangers. Dad would start filling up the jugs, turning on the faucets one by one. I would have my face pressed up against the glass counter, debating which flavor ring pop I liked better: purple or green?
I totally remember that water place, it’s called Pure Water or something, it’s in that shopping center with the Senter foods. Damn isn’t it crazy how that place burned down? I’ll never forget that fish smell, I’ll never forget staring at rows and rows of fish and their dead eyes staring back at me. Looking back now, I think that really freaked me out and probably explains why I feel so uncomfortable holding or even touching fish. You know what, I went back to Lion Plaza a few months ago and it’s definitely not how I remembered it. I remember it being so busy with all the old heads playing chess in the courtyard, kids chasing each other with little plastic swords, families on the lookout for an empty table in the food court. But everything changes I guess.
DANNY TRAN examines his past and processes the present through photography. He photographs from a distance, calling attention to the easily overlooked, approaching his subjects with a certain softness and presenting them in context with its surroundings. Isolation, otherness, and connection are recurring themes in his work.
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