Mass Capture: Photography and Chinese Exclusion in Canada
Room: IGAB Atrium
Join the Office of EDI in welcoming Dr. Lily Cho, Vice-Provost and Associate Vice-President, International and Professor of English at Western University.
For the last decade, Lily Cho has conducted extensive research into the role of photography in implementing and enforcing the Chinese Canadian head tax and the exclusion of Chinese migrants from Canada during the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1923 to 1947). Her award-winning book investigates the crucial role of photography in policing the movement of Chinese Canadians. This talk will explore how ordinary images such as identification photographs were first used as a technology of exclusion in Canada. She will show rare images of early Chinese migrants and show how looking at these images now is a way of honouring the lives of the men, women, and children who lived through this painful era in Canada’s history.
