Archive Room: Irene Poon and Charles Wong

Archive Room: Irene Poon and Charles Wong continues the Cantor’s Archive Rooms series highlighting the rich art historical resources available right here at Stanford. These small, single-gallery, single-artist installations feature engaging selections from the robust holdings of artist archives at Special Collections at Stanford Libraries and enhance our understanding of the artistic process.

The dual presentation of Irene Poon and Charles Wong sheds new light on each artist’s practice, foregrounding experimental photographic explorations in reflections, windows, and quiet interiors, while situating both figures within the broader development of Asian American art history in the Bay Area. The exhibition also formalizes for the first time the artistic partnership and personal relationship between the two, tracing their evolving connection over several decades, from peers, to collaborators to – life partners.

This presentation features photographic prints from both artist’s archives, alongside their correspondence, personal pictures, Wong’s writings on Poon’s photography, as well as a sound piece featuring music from the Metropolitan Opera that Poon listened to while working in her home darkroom.

An artist, educator, archivist, and community organizer, Poon played a critical role in advancing Asian American art history via exhibitions, publications and scholarship. Wong, who trained under Minor White and Ansel Adams at the California School of Fine Arts, gained recognition early in his career for photographs documenting San Francisco Chinatown during the 1940s and ’50s. Brought together in the 1990s at the encouragement of photographer Imogen Cunningham, Poon and Wong collaborated on the landmark publication Leading the Way: Asian American Artists of the Older Generation (1991), developing an exchange that later grew into a romantic partnership that continued until Wong’s passing in 2024.