This project began after a portfolio review with Martha Schneider of the Schneider Gallery in Chicago, who advised me to photograph my everyday life. At the time, my children were young, and without extended family in Vancouver, life often felt solitary. I began turning my camera toward the small moments that shaped my days – the soft light on a kitchen counter, an unmade bed, a sidewalk scattered with leaves. What started as an exercise became a quiet celebration of the beauty found in fleeting moments, overlooked objects, and nostalgic places.

When I first moved to Vancouver over twenty years ago, it didn’t immediately feel like home. The city, like many urban spaces, can feel transient and isolating – especially while raising young children. Despite being surrounded by people, I often felt alone. There were moments when I tried too hard to belong, to forge a sense of community, only to be left with a deeper longing. Photography became a form of connection and reflection – a way to see myself and my world with more clarity and tenderness.

The title, Everyone is so nice… no one needs a new friend, came from a conversation with a friend about how difficult it can be to form relationships in Vancouver. She had felt the same way, saying, “Everyone is so nice, but no one needs another friend.” That phrase stayed with me.

Through photographing my everyday, I began to understand that the belonging and community I craved could also exist in the ordinary – in the gestures and routines that connect us to those who came before us. The domestic rituals of cooking meals, folding laundry, and caring for others became a way of mapping a particular landscape of womanhood and migration, shaped by love, repetition, and resilience. These images speak to the quiet labor of mothering, the simultaneous joy and grief of watching children grow more independent, and the ongoing effort not to disappear in the process.

Everyone is So Nice… No One Needs a New Friend is about bearing witness to my own life – as a woman, a mother, and an immigrant – and finding beauty in the in-between spaces. It is about reclaiming the domestic sphere as a site of meaning, memory, and art. Through these photographs, I explore what it means to belong – not just to a place, but to oneself – and to honor the collective memory of those who came before me by passing it on to my children.

Ultimately, this project is an attempt to say: I was here. This mattered.