Project: We partnered with SF’s Chinese Cultural Center and Edge on the Square to produce an embodied visual ethnography documenting Chinatown’s first Pride procession as intergenerational joy
The procession on The Friendship Bridge
Date & Place: May 24, 2025; Chinatown, San Francisco
Event: First Chinatown Pride procession and festival, under the theme We Are Immortal
Focus Area: Cultural equity, LGBTQ+ visibility, intergenerational storytelling
Methods: photo documentation, participatory presence
Free Mom Hugs + Rice Rockettes
city dignitaries, politicians, artists, activists, and community members catch joy of the day
HISTORICAL TERRAIN
Chinatown holds deep legacies of activism and art but, as in many places globally, queer histories here have often been under-told or erased. The challenge was how to document the first Pride procession and festival in ways that honor community voices, intergenerational connections, and embodied joy for both the present and for the future.
APPROACH + PROCESS
Drawing from visual ethnography as embodied, sensory, and relational, the photography process emphasized:
•Immersive Presence: Walking the procession route alongside participants, attending to sound, movement, and atmosphere—allowing the city itself to be part of the method.
First Annual Chinatown Pride Procession
procession-goers respond to the choreography
procession participants point out Chinatown landmarks
•Participatory Ethos: Letting stories emerge in situ—listening to elders recount telephone exchange histories, observing children dancing, engaging with drag performers and artists. Participants guided what felt meaningful to show.
•Photography as Knowledge-Making: The images were not illustrations but traces of encounter. Shoes on uneven pavement, shifting lantern-light, laughter between generations—all became data that reveal Chinatown Pride as lived, felt, and historic.
•Ethical Sensibility: Minimal staging. Attention to dignity and consent. Commitment to capturing Chinatown Pride as co-created energy rather than externally imposed narrative.
community members learn choreography at Edge on the Square
“Chinatown is profoundly queer—not just in identity, but in existence. Its queerness stands as an act of defiance against racism, displacement, and corporate encroachment. This history runs deep through San Francisco’s cultural fabric, inspiring an ‘immortality’ that lives on in those who continue our fight against erasure.”
Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory hand out samples of their famous cookies
elders entertain with traditional drumming
Rice Rockette member, PeiPei Ma Bilz, at the CCC community Bridge
IMPACTS + RESULTS
tabling at the SF Chinese Cultural Center
•Cultural Visibility: Images made queer Chinatown histories visible—contributing to resisting erasure.
•Organizational Assets: Photos now serve partners (SF Chinese Cultural Center & Edge on the Square) as festival marketing, web galleries, advocacy material.
•Community Engagement: Participants saw themselves reflected, affirming identity and legacy.
•Documentation for the Future: A visual record that becomes archive—proof of presence, proof of hope.
DJ Microtone and DJ Livv spin a lively mix for We are Immortal! silent disco
silent disco fundraiser at SF Chinese Cultural Center
TAKEAWAYS
•Co-presence Matters: Processing and dancing with participants, not apart from them, generates images infused with context and feeling.
•Images as Dialogues: Sharing imagery with community members, photos sparked pride, memory, and new storytelling.
•Everyday Details Speak: Small moments between attendees and performers, site texture, tabling, and silent-disco good times carried as much meaning as the grand procession.
DIY: WAYS YOUR ORGANIZATION CAN DO THIS WORK
1. Begin with immersion—walk the spaces, feel the atmosphere.
2. Let participants co-shape what is documented.
3. Seek details that evoke sensory and emotional registers, not just events.
4. Share images back to community for reflection.
5. Build dual outputs: public storytelling + internal archive for memory-keeping.
CTA
Visual ethnography allows cultural centers, nonprofits, and movements to show not only what they do, but what they feel like to live inside. We Are Immortal! demonstrates how images can serve as tools for visibility, dignity, and collective memory.
KIT: Schedule a 30-minute discovery call. Let’s design processes together that honor your community’s presence and ensure its stories endure.