Personal Work
Women In Color Series - See more images here
Women In Color
I was looking at my commercial portfolio one day and realized all the models I had were caucasian and light skinned Latina models. I am a Chinese-American woman and felt guilty and outraged by the lack of ethnic diversity and color in my commercial work. So I consciously made an effort to do something to bring more color in to my portfolio and to the world.
At first I thought I needed more women of color in my book but then I thought color is much more than just the color of your skin. So I broadened my scope of thinking to women in color instead of just women of color. “In”, embodies so much more, as in the color of your skin, the color found in your personality, the color of your aura and even down to the color of your bra.
Read the full Interview in Items Magazine re: this project read here.
Beyond Pink
These award winning images are very close to my heart. When I picked my mother up from the hospital after her mastectomy she was hunched over in shame and embarrassment. I was just happy she was still alive after her second bout with breast cancer. I made this series to not make you pity her because of these scars but to empower her and other women to celebrate what they have endured. I want everyone to feel comfortable in their own skin and own their body and their power.
These series have received Honorable Mention in Siena International Photo Awards and Tokyo International Foto Awards.
It was also a top featured images in Bored Panda’s coverage of SIPA. See article here.
Think Inside the box. More images here.
Red Box Project
The Red Box Project asked artist around the world to create images and artwork. For the one year anniversary party for the Red Box Project I was asked to make an original series of images with the red box. It was my thought that the box has gone around the world for a year so it was time for the world to go back in to the box. Similar to respiration, you go out as far as you can but eventually you have to come back to yourself. So I chose to not photograph it on location like all the other images but in a studio surrounded by multi ethnic women.
Sugamo #33 from Back to the Streets Series by Becky Yee
Back to the Streets
Back to the Streets examines the dying world of the Tokyo’s shotengai, or shopping streets. As Tokyo evolves, the city's youth and youth culture have concentrated on the major centres: namely Shibuya and Harajuku. Ignored by much of Tokyo's adolescent, are the fringes of the cities older shopping streets. These traditional shopping streets live on but for the most part they are the world of the Japan's "silver" generation.
The photos took place in an area called Sugamo which is nicknamed “The Harajuku for Grannies” I took the typical cosplay kids from Harajuku and brought them to The Harajuku for Grannies to create this whimsical series of photos. The grannies were really shopping and I juxtaposed these kids in to their everyday shopping life.
