I Will Not Stand Silent.’ 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality

In this TIME magazine feature, journalist Anna Purna Kambhampaty and photographer Haruka Sakaguchi document the pandemic-era experiences of ten Asian Americans through a series of portrait-based visual testimonies. Each subject is photographed in an environment marked by their trauma or activism—such as a subway platform, city street, or protest site—while offering personal narratives of racial harassment, fear, and resistance during the early months of COVID-19. The piece juxtaposes striking photographic portraiture with first-person statements, creating a powerful form of visual storytelling that foregrounds lived experience and identity. For example, Justin Tsui, a Chinese American nurse, describes a terrifying encounter with a harasser on the subway; Ida Chen recounts being followed for blocks while enduring racial slurs, which led her to hide markers of her identity in public.

This contribution to COVID-19 storytelling is grounded in a testimonial and visual form that bridges journalism, portraiture, and racial justice narrative. The project directly links anti-Asian racism during the pandemic to broader social justice movements, especially Black Lives Matter, highlighting the political urgency of cross-racial solidarity. By pairing photographic portraiture with reflective text, Sakaguchi and Kambhampaty craft a mode of storytelling that uses visuality to center marginalized voices and make visible the emotional and spatial geographies of pandemic racism.