Brandon Leung

The Houseboy series was inspired by my encounter with archival images of Chinese Houseboys in British Columbia. Many early Chinese immigrants to Canada worked as household labourers for wealthy White Canadian families in BC. Across a few BC archives, I have found group photographs of these families, which include the family’s Chinese servants standing out like a ghostly presence. I made the photographs in this series to conjure these early Chinese immigrants into the present day, outside of their originating pictures, mediated through the computer screen as I found them and as most people see images today.

This series is influenced by early Chinese Canadian studio photography, such as the D.I.Y. nature of the photographs of C.D. Hoy, the editing of absent family members into family photos, and ancestral worship practices.

Brandon Leung is a photographic artist born and raised on the unceded and ancestral territories of the x m k y “ m (Musqueam), S wx_wú7mesh (Squamish), and s lilw ta (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. His research and artistic interests revolve around underrepresented historical narratives, especially involving Chinese Canadian history, and the intersections between art and archives.