Visions of Eden by Ryan Frigillana

Issue 166

Visions of Eden presents a visual account of my family’s journey as first-generation Filipino immigrants in America examined through the mythological lens of Christian doctrine and The American Dream.

Responding to my heavy religious upbringing and the struggles I faced in assimilating at a young age, I question the veracity of these ingrained ideologies and the faulty notion of paradise through recurring motifs of decay, mortality, and false promise. Intended as an experience in book form, the project weaves together original photography with appropriated imagery from children’s Bible-story books and ephemera from my own family’s archives—snapshots, letters, and video stills—to form a window into the complex experience of faith, both spiritual and ideological. How have these power structures molded my life, and how do they possibly intersect, collude, and inform one another? To immigrants abroad, America is pictorialized in heart and mind as a proverbial Eden, the land of milk and honey. What is our forbidden tree?

A meditation on familial identity, religion, death, and legacy—this hybrid ‘portrait’ contemplates past and present, and both the uncertainty and hope of our desired futures.

Ryan Frigillana (he/him) lives and works in Long Island, New York, USA.
ryanfrigillana.com | @frigggy