Koreatown Dreaming: Stories & Portraits of Korean American Life

Photographer Hahn’s animated and vivid debut celebrates how Korean Americans have made their lives and livelihoods in enclaves across the country. Wending mostly through Los Angeles’s Koreatown, with stops in New York’s and districts in Hawaii, New Jersey, and Virginia, Hahn captures the proprietors of mom-and-pop businesses that serve as the heartbeat of their communities, including Kim’s Home Center, which opened in 1973 Los Angeles to make available “goods that [Korean customers] wanted from back home,” such as rice cookers and other kitchenware; Dallas’s Encore Family Karaoke, which “remains a beacon of old Koreatown... even as newer Korean and Asian communities have moved into more-affluent parts of the city”; and Wilshire Photo Studio in L.A., whose owner, Gilbert Lee, is aware that there is “barely any future left” in brick-and-mortar photography stores, a sense of uncertainty that commingles in these photos with pride in his trade. In snapshots paired with a brief essays about each establishment, Hahn takes a brilliant look at the resilience and ingenuity of immigrants who have battled economic hardship, racism, and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic to carve out lives for themselves in America—stories that he contends are particularly essential at the moment: “In an era of heightened racial discrimination... telling [them] makes the case that we’ve been here and will continue to be.” This is exceptional. Photos. (Oct.)