Watch back our online conversation with Stuart Isett, Silong Chhun, Pete Pin and Charles Fox on the latest publication from Catfish Books, On the Corners of Argyle and Glenwood.

On the Corners of Argyle and Glenwood is a timely reminder of the significance of the Cambodian diaspora coming of age. Taking place on 11 March, 2021, this talk focused on the collaboration between Isett, Chhun and Pin, which has reframed the work and played an important role in the community’s representation.

On the Corners of Argyle and Glenwood by Stuart Isett. Words by Silong Chhun and Sequencing by Pete Pin:

As a young graduate student in photography in the early 1990s, Stuart Isett found himself on the corners of Argyle and Glenwood streets in Chicago, photographing Cambodian refugees who had settled on the city’s north side near his apartment. Isett entered a world which would define his practice, spending much of the next 25 years working in South East Asia, often returning to work on issues affecting the Cambodian diaspora.

Nearly 30 years later, in collaboration with Cambodian-American activist Silong Chhun and Pete Pin, a Cambodian-American photographer, Isett revisited the Chicago work. Together they re-sequenced and contextualised the series. Chhun and Pin would have been the young boys in the back of the room in many of Isett’s images, watching their older siblings who were Isett’s main focus, as they struggled to adapt to life in America while burdened with the trauma of war and genocide. Sequenced by Pin, with words from Chhun, this book explores the complexities of the early diaspora, not only the streets but also the tender moments of a community in transition, held together by family (គ្រួសារ, “krousar”) and tradition.

Silong Chhun
Born in Cambodia, five days after Vietnamese troops seized Phnom Penh on January 7th, 1979, Silong is one of many Khmer refugees who settled in the United States of America. Silong is a multimedia artist disciplined in videography, photography, audio production, graphic design, and social media strategy. As the digital communications manager at Pacific Lutheran University, he serves as one of PLU’s leading digital storytellers, communications strategists, and social media curators. Prior to coming to PLU, Silong was the communications associate at non-profit serving immigrants and refugees at Tacoma Community House. He is also the co-founder of the Khmer Anti-Deportation Advocacy Group, a community effort that advocates, supports, and provides community members resources. 

Stuart Isett
Stuart Isett is an American photographer born in Switzerland, raised in the UK and now living in Seattle, Washington. He originally studied Southeast Asian history at university in the 1980s, focusing on Thai and Cambodian history, and moved to Thailand as an academic before becoming a photographer. In the early 1990s he lived in Chicago, near the city’s large Southeast Asian refugee community living near Argyle Street and for over 3 years Isett embedded himself as a documentary photographer in the small, tight-knit Cambodian community, then centered at the corners of Argyle Street and Glenwood Avenue. The work also took him to Cambodian communities in Long Beach and Bakersfield, California, and after 2006 back to Cambodia where a generation of Cambodian American refugees have been deported by the United States government.

Pete Pin
Pete Pin is a photographer based in New York. Born in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp on the border of Cambodia and Thailand in 1982, Pin and his family were resettled as refugees in California in the early 1980’s. His work explores themes of memory, migration, and inter-generational trauma among the Cambodian American community across the United States and among his own family in the U.S. and Cambodia. A high school drop-out, Pin is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he did honors, and the International Center of Photography. His photographs on the Cambodian diaspora have been featured in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, NPR, and VICE, among others, and is in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress. 

Charles Fox
Charles Fox is a photographer working on long term questions about legacies of conflict, with a particular focus on South East Asia. He lectures in photography and set up Catfish books in 2019.

Catfish Books
Catfish Books was launched in 2019 with a specific focus on photography and writing centred on South East Asia. We see a wealth of exciting and relevant practice that is just not visible. We want to address that by exploring both new work coming out of the region and its diaspora as well as revisiting work rooted in the region’s recent history.

Image credit: Stuart Isett, from the series On the Corners of Argyle and Glenwood

Open Rooms is Open Eye Gallery’s online programme. It involves free live-streamed talks and workshops, plus ongoing public discussions on our Discord community. It takes place in rooms all across the world — artists’ rooms, chat rooms and in your living room.

Open Rooms is livestreamed to our Twitch channel, an online streaming service.

We also have a community of chat rooms and ongoing conversations on Discord, a free messaging app open to all. To join, follow this link and download Discord on desktop or mobile.