By Alissa Altmann, Emilio Bañuelos, Elena Carrasco, Jennifer G. Chung, Jennifer Hultz, Nancy Jeakins, Annie Koh, Peter Mallet, Li Thornton, Pacific New Media
Paradise
by Emilio Bañuelos
I have been to paradise three times. The first time I went to Hawaii, I was fresh out of high school. For two weeks, I was a picture in a brochure wearing a flowered shirt, with fresh-burned mainland skin, and always smiling in the sunset. The island and I shared oysters on a half shell, she fed me poi and earth-roasted pig. I rode a scooter from the Waikiki tourist strips and high end malls to the tourist trampled waterfalls surround by elephant ear plants to stand in awe of natural beauty.
When I moved to paradise a month after 9/11, I was working at a new, empty, three-story nightclub on the Waikiki strip. Without airplanes from the mainland the strip was left silent. Bar staff passed the time on video poker machines, drinking the cheap beer on tap. After weeks of sitting, waiting, the club started to fill again. Locals reclaimed the club that before September catered to tourists.
After almost a year of waiting, as the tourists were starting to return, I was still wearing flowers; my work uniform was aloha, my skin was brown from hours on concrete in frowns of sun and I was no longer smiling. The crowds of drinkers and dancers were arriving as I was departing.
When I returned nine years later, I returned with a new respect for the island. I had been a tourist in paradise, then an employee that depended on them for my living. This time I returned to work again in paradise. Elena Carrasco and I were invited by Pacific New Media to bring the Wandering Workshop to Hawaii. We were thrilled to be working with a group of photographers interested in document their own communities and making images that come as a result of conversations with their subjects. Our goal was to make urban portraits as visual introductions of people from one city to people in different cities in order to provide a glimpse at how people inhabit, use and exist within their communities. I can see paradise in the faces of the photographed, I see paradise because the photographers focused on the people of Hawaii rather than its place on the map.
mahalo
