Director Hayley Gray celebrates the work of Japanese photographer Senjiro Hayashi in this beautiful documentary short. Commissioned by STORYHIVE — a platform which supports BC and Alberta-based creators — “Hayashi Studio” is a testament to the wealth of stories and experiences that too often go unseen or unacknowledged. As Hayley shared with us about why she took on the subject of Japanese Canadian history:
“It makes me mad that throughout North America what we know (and what we teach) with regards to racialized communities is the worst moments in their past, we don’t learn about the successes, we learn about the setbacks and the atrocities. Japanese North American’s have been here for a hundred and fifty years, there is at least sixty years of Japanese-Canadian history before 1942, longer if you look in the US. How do we learn to care about communities when we’re only taught about the moment they lost everything? When we learn that they are footnotes in another story?”
Hayashi Studio director Hayley Gray – photo by Jeremy Lee
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