Transpacific Photography & Obscura Project

Curtis Wong asked his father a simple question: “What did you do in the War?”

His father Wayne pointed to a dark green wooden footlocker under the house which was covered in 50+ years of dust.

That was the beginning of the discovery. Once opened, Curtis found cameras, unexposed 35mm film and dozens of images of Japanese people and American soldiers. There were also photos of the remains of the World War II firebombing outside of Tokyo. As a Chinese American soldier in the Signal Corps during the Occupation, Wong masterfully captured ordinary postwar life.

Following the presentation, Team Obscura will immerse audience members in the photographic perspective of Wayne Wong, presenting a personalized, evolving documentary experience. The “Portola Obscura”, a retrofitted VR headset, tracks an individual user’s gaze, using positional metadata to chart a narrative trajectory through Wayne’s images. The resulting documentary is then overlaid with the user’s gaze and projected to a wider audience, offering insight into how others perceive and interpret images.

Tickets for this program are free, but do not include access to MOHAI’s exhibitions. If you would like to see all that MOHAI has to offer during your visit, you can purchase museum admission here.

ASL Interpretation and CART captioning are available during the program. In addition, a limited number of Assistive Listening Devices are available upon request. For more accessibility support, email [email protected] two weeks before the program.