CHASING LIGHT

2023

Some projects start with the answer, but this one started with questions. Why was a Manhattan neighborhood seeped in culture so misunderstood? How do you honor age-old traditions while celebrating new ones?

And most importantly — who’s that guy with the Leica taking a million photos of trash?

We set out to find common ground in Chinatown, New York with Chasing Light: a living portrait of business and culture, tradition and innovation, people and passion.

A LIVING PORTRAIT: More than a place and or any one culture, we wanted to go below Canal Street’s surface by giving its residents the floor. But to tell a story of people requires the right person to tell it, and that’s where Wellington Chen came in — guy with a Leica and Executive Director of the not-for-profit Chinatown Partnership — who offered the all access pass and extensive photo archive to make this multimedia documentary possible.

MULTIMEDIA MAGAZINE: “Chasing Light” made the cover of 2023 Canal Mag – the portrait setting the tone for the annual publication. The documentary was segmented into chapters spread across fourteen pages of the issue. With each turn of a page, a new video popped off the magazine to play the interviews, visual vignettes, and time lapses that make up the full film.