The photographer and archivist Brandon Leung got to know RML well through the community folding/binding events that took place at the Emily Carr Library in 2024. Since then, he has generously mailed to RML headquarters a set of photos from his ongoing photo project, Houseboy. The two sets of photos (three in colour and three in black and white) montage historic images of Chinese immigrant houseboys onto Leung’s body and into his home. The houseboys are people Leung learned about through his archival work. They were workers in homes of wealthy white settler families in British Columbia around the turn of the twentieth century. This project relates so closely to the overall Reading the Migration Library project, but it is especially aligned to the montaging of historic photos about unseen labour of Chinese immigrants to BC, that is part of Clare Yow’s ac-cu-mu-la-tions. Brandon had already exchanged bookbinding labour (folding, sewing) for a copy of Yow’s publication, so in exchange for these photos, he requested Directions to BUSH Gallery by Tania Willard and Leah Decter, and Didactics to Postpone the End of the World by Sarah Shamash.
