it covered a queen mattress (acquired through her trawlings on craigslist, driven from chelsea on the roof of her kindof boyfriend’s car, with M and i holding down the tarp). it laid on the floor of our newly flipped apartment, wood so old and sloped, it would drift like a raft in the night, away from the wall, into the middle of the room.

an artifact, like all the little receipts and chits and slips of paper i saved in envelopes stuffed between overlapping stories growing dusty between summons to housing court and bank statements, notes to myself and notes gleaned from the trash, transferred between repurposed shipping boxes and homes, these transactional slips like resin, age turning their edges amber, papering over what i knew i wouldnt want to forget.”

Alexis created this self-portrait as part of the 1 in 3 Photography Project. See more photos and stories from the project.

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(Click to enlarge photos)

Alexis Padriga Lim is a nonbinary, mixed child of immigrants, currently based in New York, but often putting the “trans” in transient. In their attempt to reappropriate photography and redirect the history of its colonial gaze, their photographic practice stems from a deep desire to compassionately document, commemorate, immortalize, describe, and represent the people and environments of their direct and adjacent communities. As someone who is often at various intersections of identity, complication and contextualization is key to their creation of rich and nuanced work. Alexis is a 2014 graduate of New York University’s Gallatin School of Individual Study, with a concentration in Photography, Narratives, and Identity. Their work has previously been displayed at the Museum of Chinese in America, and in various zines.