Ryan Frigillana’s latest series and self-published photobook Visions of Eden takes an open-ended visual journey through his family’s experience as first-generation Filipino immigrants in the United States.

New York-based photographer and writer Ryan Frigillana sequences his own photographs among archival family photos, video stills, letters from his grandparents in the Philippines, and pages from illustrated children's Bible storybooks to understand his complicated relationship with religion and the American Dream.

Frigillana balances and re-contextualizes these images to build a poetic narrative loosely structured on the Hebrew Bible. Two wasps sitting on a decaying apple; a video still of Frigillana's older brother using a camcorder to capture his family in a bedroom mirror; underexposed family portraits from gatherings and graduations; light beaming into a dark room through cracks in an open door. Time and faith feel scattered yet comforting.

We spoke to learn more about his work and personal history.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Ryan Frigillana