{"id":3365,"date":"2020-05-08T18:30:06","date_gmt":"2020-05-08T18:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/?p=3365"},"modified":"2024-06-04T18:19:19","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T18:19:19","slug":"upcoming-exhibition-an-unlikely-photojournalist-emile-bocian-in-chinatown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2020\/05\/08\/upcoming-exhibition-an-unlikely-photojournalist-emile-bocian-in-chinatown\/","title":{"rendered":"UPCOMING EXHIBITION | An Unlikely Photojournalist: Emile Bocian in Chinatown"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Lauren Gilbert (co-curator)
\nSenior Manager for Public Services, Center for Jewish History<\/h3>\n

UPCOMING EXHIBITION | An Unlikely Photojournalist: Emile Bocian in Chinatown<\/h2>\n
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Emile Bocian in the 1970s. Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Emile Bocian (1912-1990), son of Eastern-European Jewish immigrants, was perhaps the only non-Asian resident of Chinatown\u2019s iconic Confucius Plaza apartment complex at the intersection of Bowery, Doyers Street, and Division Street in the 1970s and 80s.\u00a0<\/span>Through a series of chance encounters, he was employed as a photojournalist for a New York-based Chinese-language newspaper, <\/span>The China Post.<\/i>\u00a0[Left:<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>A section showcasing one Chinatown journalist per week featured a caricature of Bocian with the caption, \u201cDo you know that we have a western photojournalist in our press?”]<\/span><\/p>\n

Though a lifelong photography hobbyist, Bocian\u2019s former career had been in public relations. In a series of letters to his friend Chan Canasta, noted mentalist and TV magician, Bocian explained the roots of his connections with Chinatown and The China Post<\/em>: \u201cI got involved with Chinatown when a theater owner asked me to get some publicity for an unknown actor in a movie Fist of Fury\u2026I did such a good job that it started the avalanche of kung fu movies in the U.S. \u2026The theater owner also owned this paper and that is how I am here.”<\/p>\n

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Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like many statements from the former PR man, this one contained more than a little hyperbole. (Bocian was later quoted<\/a> in the <\/span>New York Times<\/span><\/i> as a self-des<\/span>cribed \u201cformer press agent to Bruce Lee.\u201d) In the same letter, Bocian tells Canasta about the fictional backstory he created for himself to foster trust in his adopted community: \u201cI tell them I was born in K\u2019ai Feng so they can understand why a Jew is helping the Chinese. K\u2019ai Feng was a capitol [sic] of China in the 11th century when it had a large\u00a0Jewish colony.\u201d [Right:<\/em> Letter to Chan Canasta dated May 4, 1976]<\/span><\/p>\n

Though Bocian spent his final decades documenting and promoting New York City\u2019s Chinese community, he remained an outsider in the neighborhood, as he was not Chinese-American and never learned the language. Over his long residency and photo-journalistic career, however, Bocian and his camera became familiar fixtures on the streets of Chinatown. After his death, the July 27, 1990 edition of <\/span>The United Journal,<\/span><\/i> a Chinese-language newspaper that employed Bocian after <\/span>The China Post<\/span><\/i> had ceased publication, paid tribute to him as \u201ca dear friend of NYC Chinatown\u201d and \u201c[one of] the 3 most respected Jewish persons in the New York Chinatown, the others were Raber and Cohen.\u201d (Irving R. Raber was a real estate developer in Chinatown, and Irwin Cohen was an immigration lawyer who had maintained an office in Chinatown for 25 years.)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Emile Bocian, 1978. Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During his years as a photojournalist in Chinatown, Bocian amassed an archive of approximately 120,000 photos, largely featuring the places and faces of his adopted neighborhood. <\/span>After his death, his friend, the actress Mae Wong, happened upon the photographs and some personal belongings in his apartment, which she saved until the <\/span>Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) <\/span><\/a>had space for them in the mid-1990s.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Emile Bocian, 1979. Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On January 15, 2020, MOCA\u2019s Assistant Director of Collections (and co-curator of the exhibition) Kevin Chu brought a box of photographs and a handful of memorabilia to the Center for Jewish History in preparation for this upcoming joint exhibition at the Center. One week later, <\/span>the Chinatown building housing MOCA\u2019s archive went up in flames<\/span><\/a>. Despite this tragedy, this fortuitous timing enabled the two museums to forge ahead with the planned exhibition, notwithstanding the extensive damage to MOCA\u2019s collections.<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing out of a collaboration between MOCA and the Center for Jewish History that started in 2019 with a shared <\/span>CLIR<\/span><\/a> grant for <\/span>Digitizing Hidden Collections<\/span><\/a>, this exhibition, organized by the Museum of Chinese in America and Center for Jewish History, will showcase never-before-seen photos of protests, celebrations, and crime scenes, as well as storefronts and streetscapes that provide a glimpse into a vanishing New York. It will also feature snapshots of local luminaries and Chinatown visitors as far-flung as Cardinal Cooke, Muhammad Ali, and Big Bird.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Emile Bocian, 1982. Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The opening of <\/span>An Unlikely Photojournalist: Emile Bocian in Chinatown<\/span><\/i>, originally planned for March, has been postponed due to the current closure of the Center for Jewish History. Please check back on our website<\/a> for updates about the opening date, and look for additional blog posts in the coming weeks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Emile Bocian, 1976. Courtesy of The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SEE PART 2<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lauren Gilbert (co-curator) Senior Manager for Public Services, Center for Jewish History UPCOMING EXHIBITION | An Unlikely Photojournalist: Emile Bocian in Chinatown Emile Bocian (1912-1990), son of Eastern-European Jewish immigrants, was perhaps the only non-Asian resident of Chinatown\u2019s iconic Confucius Plaza apartment complex at the intersection of Bowery, Doyers Street, and Division Street in the 1970s and 80s.\u00a0Through a series of chance encounters,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,1273,1274,1272,159,1275],"class_list":["post-3365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-center-for-jewish-history","tag-chinatown","tag-emile-bocian","tag-museum-of-chinese-in-america","tag-new-york-city","tag-photojournalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3365"}],"version-history":[{"count":134,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4416,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions\/4416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}